


Sideslipped

by Simbeline



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: AU of Integration by Millberry_5, Alternate Universe - Dark, Cody becomes Kote in short order, Dimension Travel, Gen, Incorrect assumptions by almost every character at some point, Mandalorian Culture (Star Wars), Mandalorian Empire (Star Wars), Manipulation, Mentions of Kaminoans and Trainers being dicks, Mentions of Slavery, Show work skin for hover translations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29041626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simbeline/pseuds/Simbeline
Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi wasn't sure exactly where they were, but it was apparently some version of Mandalore where Manda'yaim hadforests. He just hoped he and his men could get back to their own reality soon.(Who was he kidding? There was no way this was going to be that easy.)
Relationships: 212th Attack Battalion & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Boil (Star Wars) & Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-2224 | Cody & Jango Fett, CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jango Fett & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Waxer
Comments: 90
Kudos: 420
Collections: Integration: The Collection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Integration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11920878) by [Millberry_5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Millberry_5/pseuds/Millberry_5). 



> Also inspired by this [Integration Crossover](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26589085/chapters/65109709) from [Star Wars Drabbles, Part II](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26589085?view_full_work=true) by [mneiai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mneiai/pseuds/mneiai).
> 
> Uhhh so I’m honestly not much of a writer, and this is my first fic in the Star Wars fandom. I don't really know how to tag so let me know if you think anything else needs to be tagged. 
> 
> This is an AU of [Millberry_5’s Integration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11920878). I’m not 100% sure if it’s necessary to read Integration first, but you should because it’s great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for too many notes:  
> Pronouns: I really like the thing in a lot of Star Wars fics where characters automatically introduce themselves with their pronouns. From an English/Basic perspective, it’s awesome and makes sense. But the majority of spoken language in this fic is supposed to be in Mando’a, which is apparently a pretty gender-neutral language. I’m from an English-speaking country but have been living in a country where the language is also fairly gender-neutral for a decade. What I’ve noticed is personal pronouns become a complete non-issue when no one uses them. The trans and particularly non-binary friends I’ve made here care 0% about pronouns and had never even thought about what type of pronouns they might like to use in English before I asked them about it, because in their own language it comes up so rarely. Gender neutral languages can be just like that. So, I’m taking kind of a different approach to pronouns with this fic, which is that specific pronouns will be used for characters who we are currently in the head of and other characters they know the pronouns of. Characters that character does not know the pronouns of will all be “they” – the assumption being that they’re thinking or speaking in Mando’a and wouldn’t even be thinking pronoun words at all.
> 
> Regarding Mando’a, I don’t write a ton of it in this fic because the characters are speaking Mando’a 90% of the time and it would get cumbersome. But I will likely use a few more common words like buir (parent/guardian), ad (child/son/daughter), vod (sibling/brother/sister), etc because they sound better than using either the more gendered term like ‘mother’ or the gender-neutral English word like ‘parent,’ and I also sometimes use Mando’a words to signify a switch from Basic to Mando’a. That will only happen a few times as Mando’a will become the primary language of communication for characters in the fic. When Vod’e is capitalized, it’s usually referring to the clones as a whole. Translations will be at the bottom of each chapter. Edit: I made a little hover thing that I believe works on most modern browsers and also on mobile - yay. Tap/hover over the word to bring up the tooltip and then tap elsewhere to close it.
> 
> On relationships: I’m AroAce AF and relationships will probably not appear. But you can certainly read Codywan, or Jangobi or whatever ship you like into it behind the scenes. The fic itself will be 100% Gen though. So unlike in Integration where Jango was wanting to get with Obi-Wan, it's more going to be he hardcore wants all 4 of them as his family.

Obi-Wan was leading Cody, Waxer, and Boil around the side of a Separatist encampment to attack a proton cannon preventing reinforcements from landing, when suddenly they were falling.

Obi-Wan automatically reached for the force to slow their fall, although it wasn’t all that far, and they landed with a _thump_ in the middle of what looked like a forest.

They had been on a rocky moon, with no vegetation to speak of.

He closed his eyes and reached up to his aching head. Even though it had only been a few meters drop, and he had slowed their fall regardless, Obi-Wan’s head felt like he’d smashed it into a rock wall several times. He felt in the force for his men – all present and accounted for, but seemingly just as dazed as he was.

He looked up to where they’d fallen from, to see a strange static sitting in the air several meters above them. It was shrinking, and he felt around the edges of it carefully with the force, but it only made his head ache worse.

Without his interference, it stopped shrinking when it was a speck of static, hanging disconcertingly among the trees.

He turned back to look at Boil, who had gotten his bucket off and was now holding his head groaning. Cody certainly wasn’t feeling much better, Obi-Wan could tell, but was making a better effort not to show it as he slowly got to his feet.

“Did anyone get the name of what hit me?” Waxer asked, struggling up to lean against Boil. He brought his blaster up to ready position, but Obi-Wan could tell he was struggling.

“Force _osik_ (shit) is my guess,” said Boil. “Since nowhere in this system has trees.” 

“Glad to hear you were listening to the briefing,” remarked Obi-Wan, now taking the time to look around them. It was certainly a lush forest. They were in a natural clearing, but there didn’t seem to be many signs of life – no trails going out of the clearing. “I know all we’ve all got fairly bad headaches,” Obi-Wan said, “But any other injuries? I tried to slow our fall, but it was still a bit of a drop.”

Boil groaned again, “I don’t think I’d even be able to tell with how much my head’s hurting, sir.”

Waxer just twitched his fingers into the sign for ‘same.’

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and tried to enter a light healing trance to alleviate the pain. After his own pain reduced, he reached out first to Cody and then the others, slowly siphoning their pain into the force.

He felt more than heard Cody sigh with relief next to him, while Boil and Waxer finally stumbled to their feet, both bringing up their blasters with more ease now that the weren’t in so much pain.

Obi-Wan glanced at Cody. “Commander, would you get some readings from that – portal or what’s left of it above us? We may be able to find a way back.”

“On it, sir,” Cody replied, looking down at his wrist scanner and beginning to take readings.

“Boil, Waxer – secure the area and then try to discretely raise someone on the comms.” Obi-Wan ordered. “I have a feeling we’re a long way from the fleet, and if we’re in Separatist space I’d rather they not know we’re here.”

“Yes, sir, General.” They both said, before starting to walk the perimeter of the clearing.

Obi-Wan sat down and reached out for his force bonds. His remaining padawan bond with Anakin was the strongest, but still weak, and it led up to the point of static. It didn’t feel like Anakin was somewhere else in the galaxy and the quickest path was through the static, it felt like Anakin existed nowhere except within the static. He felt simultaneously close, just small, but also a galaxy away. His other bonds were even weaker.

He pushed away his twinge of anxiety and focused on expanding his senses. Wherever they were certainly had life, and he could feel some sentients in one direction. It was hard to get a sense of them from this distance, the minds he brushed had an orderliness to them that might hint at it being a military outpost. Yet, there were still other minds with the type of disorder that spoke of youth. Even among force-nulls, adults tended to have more orderly, controlled minds than younglings.

So, perhaps just small village from a more militaristic culture.

Regardless, he noted the direction and then opened his eyes. Cody was crouched in front of him with all of their ammo, ration bars and other supplies laid out in front of him.

“How are we doing?” Obi-Wan asked quietly.

“Enough rations for a couple days, sir.” Cody said. “Boil found some mushrooms, but I’m hesitant to eat them unless we have to.”

“Anything from the scans?”

“Not much, sir.” Cody said. “These wrist scanners aren’t as good for energy readings. We should try to find something a bit more specialized.”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Well, there’s some kind of village or encampment not far in that direction,” he gestures to where he felt it, “perhaps we can manage something better – both for food and for scanners.”

“Any idea what system we’re in?” Cody asked.

Obi-Wan’s mouth twitched into a frown. “No. My bond with Anakin leads only to where we came from, and I can’t sense any others close by. I’m afraid we must be quite far from where we were.”

“Then, sir,” Cody said, “We should assume we’re in potentially hostile territory. If we’re going into a village, we should avoid looking associated with the GAR and the Jedi.”

“Good thinking, Commander,” Obi-Wan said.

Between the four of them they managed two outfits that looked more generic. Obi-Wan borrowed some blacks, which almost fit, and tied his tabards overtop. He hid his lightsaber at his back, so it would be less obvious he was a Jedi but still available if necessary. He borrowed a DC-17 pistol from Waxer so he wouldn’t look completely unarmed.

Cody kept some pieces of his armor, which didn’t scream ‘clone trooper’ as much as ‘person who often needs to defend themselves,’ and tied pieces of Obi-Wan’s robe around himself to complete the look. The rest of his armor was stacked neatly and left in Boil’s care.

They left Boil and Waxer to set up camp and stepped into the thick trees.

An hour later, after walking through thick brush for far too long, the trees finally cleared, and they could see several small buildings.

“Hm,” Obi-Wan said thoughtfully.

“You’re surprised,” Cody said.

Obi-Wan turned to him and reached up to stroke his beard in thought. “Yes. The architecture looks vaguely Mandalorian, if I had to place it.”

“So, we’re in the Mandalore system?” Asked Cody.

Obi-Wan hummed again in thought. “The architecture looks right, but I don’t know of a planet in the main Mandalore system with forests like this. Manda’yaim (Mandalorian home planet) is mostly a wasteland – a few hardier plants, but nothing like this. Not for several hundred years, anyway.”

They walked closer to the village and started encountering more people – and hearing more Mando’a. While there were many people wearing beskar’gam, there were thankfully plenty of others out of it, so they didn’t stand out too much.

“How’s your Mando’a?” Obi-Wan murmured to Cody under his breath.

“Near native, sir,” Cody said back, equally quiet, “Most troopers learned from the Alphas, but my class was one of the ones the Prime taught himself sometimes. We learned from him, too.”

“Jate (good),” Obi-Wan said, switching to Mando’a. He continued in the same language, “We should avoid speaking Basic if we want to avoid notice.”

“I didn’t know you spoke Mando’a, sir,” Cody said, also switching to Mando’a.

Obi-Wan smiled. There was no one close enough to overhear as long as they kept their voices low, so he answered, “I spent a year on Mandalore guarding Duchess Kryze in my youth. We were on the run and had to be unobtrusive much of the time, so it was necessary to learn fast. It’s only been in the past few decades that using Mando’a has been discouraged by the New Mandalorians.”

“I think that was one of the reasons the Prime taught us, even though he didn’t think of us as Mandalorians.” Cody said.

“Well, Satine and I didn’t agree on many things,” Obi-Wan said. “And certainly, this was one of them. Mando’a, and Mandalore, has a long history that shouldn’t be lost, even if much of that history was violent.” He paused. “Perhaps you should call me Ben when we’re in town. It sounds Mandalorian enough.”

“I’ll try, sir,” Cody said. “Perhaps you should call me Kote then.”

“Oh, I had wondered if perhaps Cody came from Kote,” Obi-Wan said, glancing at Cody curiously.

“The Prime named me that,” Cody said, “But later I decided I wanted to make it my own, I guess. Since they told us our Jedi wouldn’t speak Mando’a, I changed it to Cody.”

“Which do you like better?” Obi-Wan asked.

Cody thought for a moment. “It’s hard to say. No one has really called me Kote in a while. But if this is in the Mandalore system, it makes more sense to use a Mandalorian name while we’re here.”

“Any preferences for a clan name?” Obi-Wan asked. “We could use Nasaade, I suppose. People might wonder but probably wouldn’t be rude enough to ask.”

“You’d be better off deciding something like that, sir.” Cody said. “But wouldn’t Kenobi be good enough? Easier to remember.”

Obi-Wan looked at Cody with a smile. “As long as you don’t mind.”

“I think anyone in Ghost Company would change the name to Kenobi Company in a heartbeat if you asked, sir,” Cody said. “Myself included.”

“Well, then that’s decided. Kote, Ben, Boil and Waxer of Clan Kenobi, House... hm, Kryze is probably big enough that we could claim to be a minor clan without anyone taking notice.” Obi-Wan said decisively. Every Mandalorian he’d ever met had belonged to a House, so it was probably necessary for a cover story. 

Cody side eyed him, likely remembering his relationship with Satine from their mission to Mandalore, but said nothing.  
  


They stopped by a small shop selling food packs and other daily necessities.

Obi-Wan quickly managed to learn, with as much subtlety as possible, that Republic credits weren’t going to be much good here.

He then managed to spin a story about their ship getting destroyed after a pirate attack which garnered enough sympathy for the shop proprietor, Isla Wral, to let them unload and stock their shelves in exchange for some food.

“You should report that kind of thing to the capital, though,” they remarked. “If there are pirates in Mandalorian space, the patrol squads will deal with it.”

 _Patrol squads?_ thought Obi-Wan, but he simply agreed. As far as he knew, while Mandalore did have a defense force equipped with entirely non-lethal weaponry, they eschewed the type of militaristic terminology that was used before the New Mandalorians took power.

As they worked, Isla kept squinting at Cody before going back to reading on their pad. Obi-Wan worried that they might recognize him as a clone. Although clones’ faces weren’t often on the holonet, given that they generally wore armor, it was well known that they were clones of the bounty hunter Jango Fett. It was possible a Mandalorian might know what Fett looked like and figure out that Cody must be a clone.

When they finished and took their food, Isla looked from their pad to Cody and back a few times with an expression of realization.

“It’s been bugging me all day, but I just realized who you look like!” they said to Cody. Obi-Wan’s stomach dropped. “Mand’alor (sole ruler) Fett!” They showed their pad, with a holo of Jango Fett, in armor with only his helmet removed, making some kind of speech or announcement.

Cody’s eyes flew briefly to Obi-Wan’s in controlled panic.

Obi-Wan breathed his own alarm out into the force and reached out to grip Cody’s shoulder in reassurance while he smiled ruefully at Isla. “Ah, yes, he gets that a lot actually. I keep telling him he should join a lookalike contest.”

Isla laughed and turned back to Cody. “You really have got the look, if you just covered that scar. Not,” they smirked, “that it doesn’t look quite dashing.”

Cody managed to stutter out an acknowledgement before they both walked out the door as quickly as they could without looking like they were running.

The day cycle was ending when they got out of the village and into the tree line, and the emotion that Obi-Wan could feel Cody had been shoving down finally burst out. _“Mand'alor Fett?”_ he said furiously before switching back to Basic. “Where in the sith hells are we?”

“Much farther away than I thought we were, I suspect.” Obi-Wan said, also switching back to Basic. He was certainly not unaffected by the revelation but was trying to keep his calm. “But I’ll need holonet access to confirm.”

Cody made to turn back to the village, but Obi-Wan stopped him.

“It will keep until tomorrow, Commander,” he said. “We were up planning the campaign and had a long day already here. Let’s rest.”

Cody barked a laugh. “Now I know something’s wrong, you never want to rest.”

“Well, if I’m right, the war is very, very far away from here and we currently have no way to get back,” Obi-Wan said. “We may as well take advantage.”

Cody looked at him for a long moment. “All right, sir. Tomorrow.”

When they made it back to camp it was full dark, but Boil and Waxer had prepared a small fire. They greatly appreciated the addition of real food to the dry rations, up until they actually had some.

Obi-Wan liked spicy food, and Cody had eaten it once or twice when the Prime had been putting in more effort to connect with the command class, but it appeared to be Waxer and Boil’s first time eating spice. As soon as they each took a bite, both of their faces flushed, and Waxer stuck out his tongue in an effort to cool it down. Obi-Wan was smiling as he handed over the container of blue milk Isla had also given them.

The incident certainly relaxed the atmosphere. Boil and Waxer also took to their new status as members of ‘Clan Kenobi’ with great relish, addressing all four of them as ‘Kenobi’ almost exclusively as they helped clean up. Obi-Wan couldn’t help but chuckle when Boil asked Waxer to “Pass those over here will you, Kenobi?”

When they’d finished, Cody asked for a report.

“Haven’t seen any big predators yet, sir,” said Waxer, “And the few prey animals I’ve seen are skittish but not hiding. There’s a stream about half a click in that direction,” he gestured, “Not safe for drinking without boiling and straining it first, but it’d be good enough for washing.”

Cody nodded. “All right. Boil, you’re on first watch.”

“Yes, sir, Commander Kenobi, sir,” Boil said cheekily.

Cody glared at him only half seriously, and then gave his own report. When he revealed that he’d been recognized – not as a clone, but someone who looked like ‘Mand'alor Fett,’ who was apparently alive and on the holonet – Boil and Waxer were just as shocked as Cody had been.

“So, General,” asked Waxer tentatively. “Are we... in the past or something?”

Obi-Wan crossed his arms, wishing he still had his robe to hide his hands in. “My Mandalorian history further back than a couple decades ago isn’t as good as it could be. As far as I remember Fett was only considered Mand'alor for a few years, when he was a fairly young man. But the Jango Fett in the article we saw wasn’t young, he looked the same age or maybe a bit older than he did when I met him at the start of the war.”

“What does that mean, sir?” Cody asked.

“It means that we might be in a different version of the galaxy where things went differently. Possibly very, very differently,” Obi-Wan sighed. “If this is a planet in the Mandalore system, possibly even Manda’yaim (Mandalorian home planet) itself, and for it to have _trees_ , much less a breathable atmosphere... something must have changed significantly at least several centuries back. And yet, Jango Fett still exists, so at least some things must be the same.”

“Does that mean there’s another Obi-Wan Kenobi running around, sir?” asked Waxer with a grin.

Obi-Wan laughed. “It’s quite possible I suppose, although his experiences would likely be quite different from mine. Depending how long Fett has been Mand'alor, he would have likely never been asked to protect Duchess Kryze, for example.”

Cody had been grinning a bit too, but the mood shifted as his expression sobered. “Do you think the Vod’e (the clones) exist?” he asked quietly.

Obi-Wan winced. “I couldn’t say,” he said gently, “Maybe they do, maybe they do but they have different template, or maybe they don’t at all. Certainly, I can’t see Fett having the time to be on Kamino for several years if he’s also the Mand'alor.”

There was a long pause while the three mulled the possibility that they’d gone from having millions of vod’e (siblings) across the galaxy to being the only three. Obi-Wan considered that it was also possible the Jedi Order didn’t exist in this universe. The thought made him feel deeply lonely. At least, he thought, he had men he trusted with his life with him.

“Regardless,” Obi-Wan said, trying to break the mood. “Tomorrow I’ll be able to confirm more, and maybe find some more permanent employment. We should get some rest.”

Boil settled in for his watch and the others got ready to sleep. It wasn’t particularly warm, but neither was it freezing, so the standard emergency kit camping supplies were good enough.

Obi-Wan felt Cody and Waxer drop off into sleep and he stared up at the sky, reaching out for the speck of static with the force once more, with no more success than before. He pulled his attention back and looked over at Boil, who tilted his bucket as if to say _Sleep, you idiot._

Obi-Wan smiled and closed his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Osik - _shit_. Written out here because they're speaking Basic at the time, but in later chapters this will just appear as "shit" because they'll be speaking Mando'a.  
> Jate - _good_.  
> Manda'yaim - The name of the main planet in the Mandalore system. In Basic both the system and the planet are referred to as "Mandalore" so in this case it's just to differentiate it.  
> Mand'alor - _sole ruler_. Basically the king or emperor of Mandalore.  
> Vod'e - _siblings (plural)_. In this case, when capitalized it’s because it's referring to the clones as a whole.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks very much to everyone who kudos'd and commented! I didn't reply to everyone because, I don't know, I don't want to artificially inflate the comment count? But I definitely read all of them and they made me so happy. Posting about a week earlier than I said because I managed to finish a big work project earlier than I thought. Unbeta'd as usual (because how do people even find those?) but I tried to read through it a few times. Kind of still more of an exposition chapter, more stuff will actually start happening in the next chapter. I decided to do a little hover/tap translation thing even though I said I wouldn't because I found some nice code that appears to work on mobile. And it's fun. I didn't translate absolutely everything, mainly just words that were new from the previous chapter. If you need a little reminder, further translations are at the bottom of the chapter.

Obi-Wan briefly woke when the watch changed from Boil to Waxer, but not at all when it changed from Waxer to Cody, because he awoke as the sky lightened to see Cody sitting on a rock, blaster held in a relaxed grip in his hands.

He sat up. “I notice I didn’t get woken for watch,” he said.

“Your watch is tonight,” Cody said. “Since I’ve already been seen, you and I should be in charge of going to the village and finding work and supplies. In that case, Boil and Waxer will guard the camp and maybe try to trap some of the animals around here. We need the uninterrupted sleep more, so we’ll trade off morning watch. Boil and Waxer will trade who gets the midnight watch.”

“A sound plan,” Obi-Wan acknowledged. He got up and began to prepare first meal, which mostly consisted of picking out a couple ration bars and checking how much water they had left. Boil had some powdered caf with him, so Obi-Wan lit the fire again and began to boil some water. Obi-Wan hoped he’d be able to get some shig (herbal infusion drink) in the village to drink instead, but he prepared enough for the three others before settling down to eat his ration bar.

Boil and Waxer joined him soon after, Waxer was surprisingly cheerful for someone who’d had his sleep interrupted for watch, while Boil was monosyllabic. Cody joined them and laid out the plan for the day. Obi-Wan and Cody would go to the village again, access the holonet and then try to find some odd jobs to do for credits or food. Boil and Waxer would guard the camp and keep them updated if there were any changes to the static speck.

The village was much as it had been the previous day and was unfortunately too small to have a public holonet access point it seemed. They mutually decided to see Isla, the shopkeeper from the previous day, to both ask them if Obi-wan could borrow their pad and if they knew of anyone who needed some help that day.

“Su cuy’gar (hello),” Obi-Wan greeted as they entered, switching easily to Mando’a. Isla was sitting in the same place, but this time with a youngling perched next to them playing with a toy.

“Ah, Ben Kenobi!” Isla grinned and glanced at the youngling next to them, “And Kote, the Mand’alor lookalike.”

The youngling’s head snapped up to stare at Cody, studying his face intently. Obi-Wan could feel Cody’s discomfort with the focused attention, and decided to step in. “And who might you be?”

The youngling looked at Isla and back before answering, “I’m Riz!”

Obi-Wan smiled before turning back to Isla. “Would you mind terribly if we borrowed a datapad from you? We’d like to check the holonews.”

“Tell you what, stock the shelves for me this morning again, and I’ll give you one the old ones my clan keeps forgetting here.” Isla grinned ruefully. “They think they’re being subtle, abandoning their junk at the homestead. But it’s still got holonet access and can send messages.”

“Deal,” Obi-Wan said, turning back to Cody. “Well, Kote, I guess we’ve found work.”

Their previous exchange seemed to have opened the floodgates, because Riz followed them while they worked stocking shelves, peppering particularly Cody with questions.

Isla offered to feed them second meal to go with the datapad after they’d worked for a few hours. “It’s the least I can do given that you’ve kept Riz entertained.”

Obi-Wan gave a token protest before agreeing, and Cody ducked outside to comm Boil and Waxer to let them know they wouldn’t be back until the evening.

Riz only seemed to stop talking when their mouth was full of food, but by the afternoon they’d tired themselves out and fell asleep near the counter with Isla. By evening Ben and Cody had rearranged the storeroom and repaired a broken cleaning droid. Isla thanked them by giving them the old pad, and a few credits – “At the very least, buy yourselves some better clothes, would you?”

The pad burned a hole in Obi-Wan’s pocket the whole way back to the camp. While they ate, Obi-Wan began typing searches, with the others watching him intently. He first searched for the Republic in recent news.

And almost dropped the pad when he read the first headline.

_Republic Retreat At Corsin – Victory for the Empire!_

“Sir? What is it?” Cody asked.

“It seems...” Obi-Wan said, scrolling for through the article before typing in other keywords and scanning those results. “We are in the Mandalorian Empire. On Manda'yaim itself, as I thought.”

“Uh... The Mandalorian Empire that collapsed thousands of years ago? Sir?” Waxer asked hesitantly.

“Yes, but in _this_ version of the galaxy, it didn’t. They’ve just apparently taken Corsin – that’s in the Plooriod Sector, I believe – from the Republic. There is also a,” he looked up from the datapad in slight alarm even as he typed in more search terms, “ _Sith Empire_ , spanning several systems around the Outer Rim. This says the Republic, the Mandalorian Empire, and the Sith Empire are at war, although Mandalore currently has a ceasefire with the Sith Empire.”

 _“Sith Empire?_ There are whole systems of them here? This is like the Corellian Hell galaxy.” Boil groaned.

“Yes, currently led by – Emperor Palapatine?!” Obi-Wan exclaimed.

“Chancellor Palapatine, Palapatine?” Waxer asked with a baffled look.

“It certainly looks like him,” Obi-Wan showed the picture. It wasn’t a great picture, it looked as though it had been taken from afar, but it still undeniably looked like the Chancellor.

“Well...” Cody said hesitantly, “It _is_ a different reality, sir. Jango Fett is still alive, and I guess the Chancellor is a Sith.”

“You’re right,” Obi-Wan said. “But on the other hand, Jango Fett is still a Mandalorian here, not, for instance, a Jedi. But we don’t have enough information.”

“The thing I’m concerned about,” said Cody, “Is that we’re now in enemy territory. We were keeping a low profile because we didn’t know the situation, but now that we do it’s even more dangerous. We’re honestly lucky no one recognized you yet, sir. We’re, technically, Republic soldiers deep in a territory that’s at war with the Republic.”

“We shall simply have to be even more vigilant,” Obi-Wan said. “And hope that acquiring a better scanner will provide us with a path back to our own galaxy.”

The first day became a blueprint for the next weeks. In the morning they’d help Isla stock their shelves in exchange for second meal and some extra food for latemeal. Sometimes they were accompanied by a chattering Riz, sometimes not. In the afternoon they would either help Isla with some odd jobs – half the jobs Obi-Wan was sure Isla only asked for help with out of pity – or go help someone around the village in exchange for some credits.

In the evenings, they continued to read through articles on the datapad. They sometimes had trouble knowing what to search – they still couldn’t figure out exactly what went differently during the Mandalorian Wars of their own past, because of course no historian would lay out the differences between two realities. Searching for most people, like 'Isla Wral,' turned up nothing, although of course 'Jango Fett' had plenty of results. Satine Kryze was apparently Minister of Internal Affairs, but even her name appeared in just one article he could find. Events, too, were so different that aside from recent news, it was almost impossible to know what to search for.

Still, they managed to discover that while there were certainly different factions of Mandalorians, the society was much more unified than in their own reality. Reports on either the Republic or the Sith Empire were sparser, and with a clearly much more biased slant. Mace was still Master of the Order, but in the low quality holo Obi-Wan managed to find, he had a large scar over one eye here. He found mentions of the other version of himself, as well, though thankfully not many publicly available holos. The few available were grainy and didn’t have much detail. The ‘Negotiator’ – and how awful was it that he’d been saddled with that nickname in _two_ realities – was a figure many people knew _of_ but thankfully not one most people would recognize on sight. Kenobi had been a bad choice of name, but with most people not knowing exactly what he looked like he could just claim it was a common name where he was from.

Obi-Wan ached when he thought of what the Jedi Order of this galaxy must be like, after thousands of years as generals of this reality’s GAR. Even just a couple years of war had changed his own Jedi Order significantly.

Aside from the mild shock of new information that they were slowly becoming numb to, the tone of the evenings was fairly relaxed. Even though the war had been going on for a while, Obi-Wan had always been too busy to put in the kind of time that would allow him to really get to know many of his men socially. He trusted them, of course, and made time to eat in the mess or train with them when he could, but being a council member and a high general didn’t leave a lot of room for pure socializing.

While he’d thought he’d known Cody fairly well, he realized he’d never truly seen him relaxed. Even now, Obi-Wan knew there was a kind of tension that came from being around a superior officer, even if it was absolutely the least careful about regs Obi-Wan had ever seen any of them. It was clear they weren’t going anywhere at the moment and, given that both of he and Cody had to be ‘on’ while in the village, the camp became a much-needed space to destress.

Obi-Wan stared up at the galaxy at night, and thought about being raised to be a general, rather than a diplomat or a peacekeeper. His padawanship had been significantly more violent than many others, he knew, but he had still always thought his goal was to make peace, not war.

He dreamed of the faces he knew, hardened further by a lifetime of war, scraping what serenity could be found between countless battles and in uneasy ceasefires. Of the title _Sith Slayer_ being not a specter of a long-forgotten enemy, but a badge of honor for young knights. He dreamed of the Light, so sharp in its righteousness that it burned.

He saw clearly, for the first time, what his own Order had been turning into and grieved for the Jedi of both galaxies.

Cody was used to hard work, although he wasn’t necessarily used to the type of manual labor they were doing now. Marshal commanders typically did more running, shooting, and strategizing and a lot less lifting and carrying boxes. He was fairly sure the general was cheating with the force, since he didn’t seem nearly as tired as Cody felt after a long day.

The monotony of the work sometimes left him too much time to think about the Vod’e and the war they couldn’t reach. He realized how lucky he was to have been decanted to be a commander – even if there was not much he could do about it, he preferred to know what was going on.

Being able to look up the deployments of any Vod’e whenever he wanted was a luxury many troopers didn’t have, and he missed the ability to _know._ Every time he started wondering too hard, he started up an idle conversation with General Kenobi, who seemed perfectly happy to talk about nothing. Maybe he, too, wanted to be distracted from thinking about those they’d left behind.

Still, it was kind of like a vacation. There was certainly a low chance of dying, and he wasn’t buried under hours of paperwork after the physical labor was done either. General Kenobi seemed to be getting more sleep than Cody had ever known him to get, and Boil and Waxer had barely anything to do all day except take care of the camp. Cody knew they were still running drills and sparing frequently to work off their energy and stay in fighting shape for when they – eventually, hopefully – got back to the right galaxy, but it wasn’t something desperate and immediate the way everything had been in their reality.

They worked every day until they had enough between buying food and clothes to buy the dedicated scanner Isla had in their store. Isla seemed a bit curious why they wanted it, when all their other purchases had been essentials, but handed it over without asking questions.

The scanner they bought could certainly give a more in-depth scan of the point of static, but it wasn’t exactly helpful. It emitted some type of energy, but it appeared to be just the same type of energy that any other device used. As far as the scanner could tell, it was basically just a floating power generator, not a portal.

Cody’s mouth tightened in frustration.

“Nothing helpful, sir,” he reported.

General Kenobi sighed. “Well, I guess it couldn’t be that easy,” he said.

The four of them sat around the fire, lost in thought.

“What should we do now, sir?” Cody asked.

“I think we need to completely change the plan,” the general said, folding his arms. “We’ll mark the location and of course come back when we can, but at this point we have to assume we’re stuck here for now. In that case, we should work towards getting transport to a bigger city. Sundari, maybe. That would allow Boil and Waxer to also get jobs more easily, so we could all work to bring in income. A larger city would likely have an archive where we could do more research, or even try to get in contact with a research group.”

“Uh, is that a good idea, sir?” Boil asked.

“I wasn’t planning on telling them we’re from another reality, of course. But they may be able to do more in-depth scans than a commercially available scanner can. Anyway, it wouldn’t be something we did right away.”

“Shouldn’t we try to contact the Jedi, General?” Cody asked.

General Kenobi hummed in thought. “No, I don’t think that would be feasible at the moment. I doubt it’s so easy for someone from Mandalore to contact the Republic. As well I worry...” he trailed off. “You’re not just men who look like a famous bounty hunter here. You’re men who look like the leader of an enemy Empire. I worry what they might ask of us. If our own Senate had access to clones of Dooku, for example, however innocent those clones were...”

They all shuddered at the thought. The Senate had made plenty of amoral and even cruel decisions as the war wore on. A Senate that had been at war for thousands of years? They didn’t know, but none of them wanted to find out.

Cody nodded, acknowledging the danger of any Vod’e going to the Republic here. “We’ll find out how much transport is to Sundari tomorrow, sir,” said Cody. “And make a budget.”

“That brings me to another point, actually,” General Kenobi said. “I think we need to start going as we mean to continue, in terms of our relationships with each other.”

“Sir?” Cody asked.

“What I mean is, if we’re going to be seen as a clan, we need to be a clan. That means no titles and no sirs. Given names only. And – Boil, Waxer, how’s your Mando’a?” The general – no, Ben, that would take some getting used to – asked.

Waxer and Boil looked at each other. Cody knew that younger and lower-level trooper batches tended to understand Mando’a, since many of the trainers and older clones spoke it, but hadn’t been expected to speak it themselves as much. The longnecks tended to encourage them to use Basic with each other, since that was what the Republic used. Still, many troopers spoke it among themselves, with substitutions from Basic for the words they didn’t know. Command rank Vod’e were probably some of the few, aside from the Alphas and the Nulls, who would be considered fluent.

“I understand more than I speak, sir-Ben,” Waxer said, and Boil nodded in agreement.

“Well, then I think we should start using Mando’a amongst ourselves at the camp,” Ben said. “We have however long it takes to save up for transport to get your language skills good enough get by at a job once we reach Sundari.”

“Suvarir (understood),” Boil said in Mando’a. His accent was good, although Cody knew he probably would know more language useful for military service than for casual conversation.

Waxer cleared his throat before also speaking in hesitant but well-accented Mando’a, “We’ll do our best – Ben. But there’s a lot we don’t know.”

Ben smiled kindly. “Kote and I can correct you when we’re here. Just do your best when we’re not.”

Cody smiled at them encouragingly too. They were the only two vod’e he had left, here. Here where there was a war, but not one any of them had to participate in. Here where they could choose what they wanted to do, to some extent.

That didn’t mean, of course, that he wouldn’t go back if they found a way. He knew what he was and what he was made for.

Over the next several days, Cody finally let himself relax more around the others. It was hard – the rigid hierarchy of commanders and subordinates had been drilled into him his entire life. But Kenobi – Ben – was right. They didn’t know when they’d get back, and it would be easier not to slip up if they lived their cover story. It helped that they decided to wrap their extra armor pieces and bury them, now that they had extra clothes they’d purchased. It was hard, at first, to bury his bucket. It was his second face, sometimes the only thing he felt like he owned, even if technically he didn’t. But no vod would wear another vod’s bucket without a very good reason, and no one else would have tried to take it away from him either. Once it was beneath the dirt, it was like his old life was buried too. He wore Mandalorian clothes, with only a few markers of his life as Marshal Commander Cody of the 212th Attack Battalion, and it was easier to see himself as Kote of Clan Kenobi every day.

It was a freedom none of the Vod’e had ever thought they would have, and Boil and Waxer seemed to adapt to it better than he did. But one day, more than a month into their trip sideways into this strange new reality, Cody found himself automatically shouting for Ben to help him with one of the boxes they were loading without having to correct himself first.

That night when he dreamed, he was Kote, _glory._

“Do you think I could I keep using Kote even after we go back?” he asked the next day, as they walked through the forest.

Ben looked briefly startled at the question, but then smiled. “Of course. It’s _your_ name Kote. I’m sure your vod’e would be happy to call you whatever you prefer, and I’ll take care of any others.”

Kote knew that some nat-borns had trouble with how they chose their names and how they changed. Designation nicknames were common among shinies – names based on their numbers that were shorter to say in combat situation. His own had been ’24 when he was a very young cadet. Some vod kept those names forever. But most of them changed their names as they got more experience. Some names were given by batch or squad mates, others were chosen by the vod themselves. Vod’e understood that finding your name could be a process and had no issues even if a few shinies occasionally changed their names from week to week.

As far as he knew, though, no one with a rank as high as his had change their name since the war started.

Ben wasn’t quite as good as the Vod’e at remembering when names changed, but he tried. And he always knew _who_ someone was, with some kind of force sense, Kote assumed, no matter what they called themselves.

Kote smiled at Ben. “If we’re clan, you’re an honorary Vod’e too now, you know? That makes them our vod’e, not just mine.”

Ben’s look of surprised delight kept him warm the whole day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shig - A herbal infusion drink somewhat similar to tea  
> Su cuy’gar - _Hello._ Here just indicating the switch to Mando'a  
> Mand'alor - _sole ruler._ Basically the king or emperor of Mandalore.  
> Manda'yaim - The name of the main planet in the Mandalore system. In Basic both the system and the planet are referred to as "Mandalore" so in this case it's just to differentiate it.  
> Vod/Vod'e - _siblings (singular/plural)._ Can be literal siblings or people that are part of your in-group.  
> Suvarir - _Understood._
> 
> Re: names - I don't know, most trans friends I have tried out at least a couple names before landing on the one they wanted to use. I also had a friend growing up who used her middle name through elementary school and then decided when entering junior high school to start using her first name. Several people have childhood nicknames that they stop using when they become adults. I started using certain nicknames when I immigrated to the country I'm in now because they were easier for people to pronounce. I kind of imagine that at least some or even most of the clones would change their names sometimes if they felt something else suited them better.
> 
> I also had too much fun making the hover translations kind of match the default AO3 site skin, so I hope they don't look too weird for anyone who uses another site skin :x. Random fact: It's not the _main_ accent color, but one of the colors in the AO3 red graphics is #AA0033, which is kind of cute lol


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hokay, so I did not initially plan for Akkus, who is a fairly minor OC in Integration, to have such a big role in this fic, I just needed a character that was close enough to Jango to be possibly sent to investigate and could also conceivably have a reason to have seen a picture of Kote (hence Isla also being a Wral). And ze seemed cool so I just picked zir. I also really liked zir from [Millberry_5's short "Alor'ika."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18795436/chapters/58645591) But then I also remembered there was that character Sioth, who was Akkus' kid (sounded like older teenager kinda?) and one of the "adult" force users Obi-Wan was teaching in integration, and I had Thoughts so now Akkus and Sioth will probably be pretty major parts of the fic (although Sioth isn't appearing in this chapter) and it's also going to take much longer for Ben & Co to actually meet Jango as a result. You get a bit of him in this chapter. Reminder about how I'm using pronouns to try to express the gender neutral nature of Mando'a - when it's Akkus' POV ze uses the pronouns ze knows of for Isla, rather than "they" which is what Ben and Kote have been using, and in Ben and Kote's POV Akkus becomes "they." Also I do not personally know anyone who uses ze/zir pronouns so if you notice anything weird or wrong with conjugation of those let me know.
> 
> Minor edit 2021/02/19: Changed mentions of the Integration OC "Mujiita" to "Orrad" - I made a mistake with which one was the family name.

Akkus Wral didn’t visit zir hometown often. Much of zir clan had moved to Keldabe to work including zir own buir’e when ze was younger. But zir cousin Isla still lived there, doing work as both a farmer and a shopkeeper during the growing season. Several of the clan made time to go and help during planting and harvesting seasons when more help was needed, but Akkus hadn’t had time to visit in years. Being one of the Mand’alor’s advisors and generals didn’t leave much time for visiting family. Ze tended to focus on those of zir clan that lived in Keldabe, and on raising zir ad.

Now, though, Akkus was here for an investigation disguised as a family visit. Isla had posted a holo to the clan comm network a week ago. It was two humans playing with Isla’s ad Riz, and one of them was the spitting image of the Mand’alor, looking maybe a decade or so younger. The other was the spitting image of the Republic’s General Obi-Wan Kenobi, a face that Isla wouldn’t know, but most government and military officials did.

Isla had given no indication in her message that she thought the two were outsiders, and certainly they appeared Mandalorian enough. It had been an amusing photo to share with the clan, possibly something Isla thought Akkus specifically would find funny due to zir close association with the Mand’alor.

But someone who looked like the Mand’alor _and_ someone who looked like a high-ranking Republic general, together? Akkus didn’t know if it meant anything, but Jango had felt it suspicious enough to warrant checking out. What the two were doing in the middle of nowhere no one could figure out, but it seemed like they must be up to something.

Ze greeted Isla at her shop, removing zir helmet.

“Are you sure everything’s all right?” Isla asked, “It’s not like you to come off season.”

“Just need some recovery time,” Akkus smiled, tapping zir wrist. Ze had actually been injured there several months back, but it had healed just fine. “The medics said it wasn’t healing as fast as it should because I kept working, and the Mand’alor put me on leave. I thought I’d come see the Mand’alor lookalike myself, since I had time.”

Isla eyed zir with playful suspicion, likely guessing that wasn’t all there was to it. “Well, some country air will do you good.”

“When do they usually come?” Akkus asked.

“Mid-morning, generally. They’re not staying in the village itself, that’s for sure.” Isla glanced down the road leading through the village. “Old Vick said he’s seen them going to and from the forest a few times. We don’t go in there much except when it’s mushroom season.”

Akkus decided to set up outside the shop, so ze could get a good look at them as they approached. Ze got out a datapad and started poking at it one handed, carefully keeping zir other hand at zir side as if it was injured. Ze had put a small stone inside the bracer to keep zirself from forgetting that ze shouldn’t move it too much, and while it was doing its job, it was annoying.

As the sun got higher in the sky, ze saw the two enter the village, as Isla said coming from the direction of the forest. The two wore fairly standard Mandalorian clothes, with a few bits of armor. Not unusual for a country town full of farmers like this, but the armor itself was definitely not beskar. Certainly, clans with less money sometimes used other materials, especially for members who weren’t joining the military, but it was still a bit unusual. It was particularly unusual given their story that they were merchants attacked by pirates who had to make an emergency escape. Merchants who could afford a ship would have been able to afford real beskar, and probably wouldn’t even own armor in anything else.

Then again, if they were on some kind of infiltration mission, why stay here? Why have no credits? Why camp in the forest?

“Hello,” Akkus greeted as the two approached. “You must be the two who’ve been helping out around the village.”

“Ah, yes,” the red-haired Kenobi lookalike said. “Well, we’re trying to save up credits for transport to Sundari, and Isla has been kind enough to help us find work.”

“Akkus Wral,” ze said, gesturing to zirself. “Isla’s my cousin, I’m here for a visit.”

“Ben Kenobi,” they said, with no reaction to Akkus’ name.

“Kote,” the other said shortly, also with no reaction.

Their lack of reaction was confusing, to say the least. Akkus was one of the more famous figures in the Mandalorian government, although ze had been less in the public eye while raising Sioth for the past several years. Still, most anyone who looked as old as these two would likely have known who ze was, and that wasn’t vanity it was just a fact. Ze was recognized almost anywhere ze went. It was very likely even many in the Republic or Sith Empire would recognize zir armor and name, if not zir face.

And yet from these two, nothing. Not even a reaction that would suggest they were trying to suppress a reaction.

“Well,” ze said, looking back down at zir pad. “Don’t mind me. Isla says you keep quite busy.”

Ben smiled. “Perhaps we can talk more during second meal, if you’re not too tired from the trip.”

Akkus glanced back up and smiled back. “I look forward to it.”

They entered the shop to speak with Isla, and left a few minutes later, off to whoever it was who wanted their services for the day.

Akkus began slowly typing out a report for Jango with one hand. Something was _definitely_ up, ze just still couldn’t see what it was.

That... was odd, Kote thought, purposefully not looking back at this Akkus Wral.

It wasn’t something he could pinpoint, exactly, but the interaction with Wral rubbed him the wrong way.

“What did you think of Akkus Wral?” Ben asked quietly as they worked putting a large delivery away in the back room of a bar.

“They seemed friendly enough,” Kote said, “but something felt off.”

“Hm,” said Ben. “Yes, it was somewhat hard to tell through the besker’gam, but they felt more suspicious than friendly.”

“Could they be here from Isla’s clan to make sure we’re not taking advantage, or something?” Kote asked. Something about that didn’t feel right.

“It might explain the suspicion,” Ben acknowledged. “Or perhaps they’re just a naturally suspicious person.”

“Honestly,” Kote said, “I hope it’s something that simple, but I also know our track record. It’s never something easy.”

“Well, we’re in a different reality now, vod. We might have better luck in this one than the old one.”

Kote gave Ben a dry look, but still felt a quiet flare of warmth every time Ben called him _vod._

Ben laughed. “Regardless, I don’t there’s anything we can do about it but wait.”

Kote sighed. “Waiting for a possible ambush is one of my least favorite things.”

They took second meal with Isla as usual, this time joined by Akkus. The other Wral looked very impressive in gleaming besker’gam and Kote couldn’t help admiring it this close, since he didn’t think Wral would object. They hadn’t really had the chance to interact with others around the village who regularly wore full besker’gam, and back on Kamino spending too much time looking at the trainers’ armor rather than where they were about to hit you with it wasn’t a good idea.

They talked idly as they ate, Ben answering questions about his supposed hometown of Sundari as vaguely as he could without being suspicious, as he had very little idea what this reality’s Sundari was actually like.

“Speaking of Sundari,” Akkus said. “Do you have friends there? It isn’t so far out of my way back to Keldabe. I could probably take you there when I head back in a few days. It would be a tight fit, but my Flyer can take three.”

Kote and Ben glanced at each other before Ben spoke. “No particular friends, we just thought there might be more work available. It’s very generous of you to offer transport, but actually there are four of us.”

“Four?” Isla asked, raising their eyebrows. “I guess that makes sense, I’ve been wondering who was eating all the food you were buying.”

“Yes, well,” Ben cleared his throat uneasily, “I’m sure you’ve realized by now we’re camping in the forest to save credits. We have two other vod who stay to watch the camp.”

Kote wasn’t sure that sounded plausible. Wouldn’t it make generally more sense to have three people working and just one staying back? “We don’t leave anyone alone at a post,” he said, “Clan rule. It’s why Ben and I don’t split up for jobs either.”

Isla nodded in acceptance, and Akkus did a beat later. Akkus didn’t look as though they really believed the explanation, but whether it was their reason for turning down the free ride or the reason for having only two of them work, or both, Kote couldn’t say.

They were getting close enough with their savings that they would have eventually had to reveal the existence of Boil and Waxer, if only when they all came out of the woods to actually catch the transport. They hadn’t really been expecting to be put on the spot like this though – Isla didn’t really ask many questions beyond their willingness to do some job or another, and Riz was young enough that they could be distracted if they accidentally brought up something Kote and Ben didn’t want to answer.

The look in Akkus’ eyes said they wouldn’t be distracted.

The rest of second meal was slightly tense, but Akkus didn’t ask any other difficult questions, and Kote and Ben stayed in Isla’s shop in the afternoon to help stock. Akkus didn’t appear to be watching them, but Kote still felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, the way they did when something bad was going to happen.

Akkus held up a hand in good-bye to Kote and Ben as the sun sunk closer to the horizon, leaning back in zir chair with some caf, looking for all the world like ze was planning to continue relaxing for the rest of the evening.

As soon as they were out of sight, however, Akkus took a deep breath.

There hadn’t been any indication whether Ben Kenobi was a Jedi, or force-sensitive at the very least, but Akkus knew it was better to be careful.

There was various advice most Mandalorians received about dealing with force users. Some of it was more reliable than others, but always carefully noted and passed on whenever something new was learned. Both of their long-standing enemies had force users on the front lines, and even if most Mandalorians didn’t really get how the weird Jedi magic worked, they had enough scraps of information to know that there were certain ways to make yourself ‘quiet’ to force users. Most of them relied on trying to think of yourself as part of the background, blending in with whatever living things were around you. Akkus’ ad, Sioth, had some ability in that area – though thankfully not enough for him to have ever become unresponsive or fallen into a coma – and had helped zir practice.

As Akkus stepped into the tree line following the path Kote and Ben had clearly taken, ze took slow, deep breaths and tried to be very calm and placid, just something that was supposed to be there. Besker’gam apparently did half the work for them – unless they were feeling things very strongly or the other person was very focused on them in particular, it was apparently somewhat hard to sense people through it.

Trying to think very slow thoughts kept zir occupied until ze could see a flicker of fire ahead.

Ze crept forward and waited for the wind to rustle the trees before moving off the path and into the cover of more leaves. Zir display had night vision, but with the firelight it wasn’t really necessary.

What _was_ necessary was holos of this. Akkus forced zirself to continue taking slow, deep breaths and avoid having any reaction that a force user might pick up on. Around the fire were two more near-humans, in addition to Kote and Ben, both of whom _also_ looked like Jango. Although they both had facial hair like Akkus had never seen the real Jango have. They all spoke Mando’a, although the two others didn’t seem quite as comfortable with it.

 _Well, they weren’t lying about there being four of them,_ ze thought. But ze understood now why they hadn’t brought them into town, and ze doubted it had anything to do with a ‘clan rule.’ Combined with the less-than-fluent Mando’a two of them spoke, three Jango Fett lookalikes would have attracted far too much notice. It was really only luck that Akkus had found out about Kote.

Was it just a case of some forgotten estranged cousins happening to look like Jango? Or was it something more insidious? And what about Ben, who look so much like Republic General Obi-Wan Kenobi? Were they also a relative who happened to look like someone more famous?

But in that case, what was Ben doing in Mandalorian space, lying about belonging to a House?

Akkus had already commed House Kryze to check if there was a ‘Clan Kenobi’ – there was not. And while clans could certainly be independent, and anyone could form clans when they liked, why claim, then, to belong to House Kryze? Was it just for more legitimacy?

Akkus liked puzzles, but not mysteries. Ze couldn’t see one logical explanation for all the inconsistencies, even one that included an infiltration plot.

Ze waited for the trees to rustle again, before slinking away back toward the village.

Later, ze commed Jango to give zir report.

“’Alor,” Akkus said, bowing zir head respectfully. Ze explained what ze had found out so far, which was just more mysteries. Ze sent the holos along and Jango pursed his lips.

“The question is, do we bring them in now, or do we wait and see what they do?” Jango asked.

“They say they want to go to Sundari – but what if I offered them transport to Keldabe instead? Sioth could come to visit and bring the larger Flyer that seats eight. If they truly are just looking for more work, they should jump at the chance. And, if they’re infiltrators, it’s likely Keldabe was their original goal anyway. It will be easier to keep an eye on them,” Akkus said.

“Do it, then,” Jango said. “Let me know if there are any more developments, and report again when you’ve come back to Keldabe.”

“Any trouble on your end I can help with?” Akkus asked.

Jango glanced away from the holocamera. “Something might be going on with some of the ministers. The meeting rooms have been in use at odd times of night and someone noticed today. They say it’s just a social gathering, but it’s an odd group.”

“Is it Kryze, Orrad and their lot? They’ve never liked you,” Akkus said, “Can’t say why really, you’re an absolute delight, Alor’ika.”

Jango snorted, before sobering. “Them, and others. People I wouldn’t have expected someone like Orrad to lower himself to spend time with for purely social reasons. Intel says they’re all people who have been publicly or privately critical of the current administration. Many of them have expressed sympathies with the Republic – nothing treasonous, yet, but it’s establishing a concerning pattern.”

Akkus frowned in concern. It wasn’t treasonous to have some amount of sympathy for an enemy – enemy ad'e (children) were still ad’e, for example. And since adoption was less popular in the Republic than in the Empire, most Mandalorians were aware that their actions would result in ad’e left without buir’e at the very minimum, and realistically the deaths of many ad’e themselves. Most Mandalorians took that reality and used it as motivation to finish campaigns more quickly, so such ad’e could be saved, integrated, and adopted more quickly. Ze knew Orrad, and knew he’d never been one to have particular care for ad’e, so ze doubted that was where his sympathies were.

Jango sighed and shook his head. “I have other people on it. Focus on these lookalikes for now,” Jango said. “You know Sith scouts have been spotted poking around our borders, and our ceasefire with them might be over soon. I’d like to solve whatever these problems are before that happens.”

“Understood, ‘Alor.”

When Ben and Kote arrived the next morning shortly after first meal, Akkus was again sitting idly in front of the shop scrolling through zir datapad with one hand.

“Ah, the Kenobis! Good morning,” ze greeted.

“Good morning, Akkus,” Ben greeted zir with a smile. Kote nodded in greeting too.

“I was going to talk to you again about transport,” Akkus said, “Actually, my ad is coming to visit at the end of the week. We’ve got a Flyer with enough room for eight and can take you and your vod back to Keldabe – should I ask him to bring it?”

Ben and Kote glanced at each other. “We’d... certainly appreciate that, Akkus,” Ben said slowly. “But I believe I said we were going to Sundari.”

Akkus grinned at them. “But you also said you don’t have friends in particular there. You’ve helped Isla a fair amount, the least I could do is help you get started with work in Keldabe. There are plenty of jobs like the ones you’ve been doing there, too.”

The two looked at each other, for longer this time. Kote finally tilted their head to the side and looked away, seemingly leaving the decision to Ben.

Ben looked back at zir and smiled. “Well, then, we’d certainly appreciate it, although we’ll have to speak to the other members of our clan first. We’ll pay our share of the fuel of course.”

“Good. I’ll let you two get to work then,” Akkus said. Ze watched them enter the shop to speak to Isla.

Ben was definitely the leader of the group, ze thought, but Kote deferred to him somewhat more like a commanding officer in a squad than a clan head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Ben made assumptions and made an oops by saying Clan Kenobi belonged to a House. I included this because being an immigrant to a pretty different culture myself, I have assumed patterns where there actually wasn't one several times. You see 3 people seperately do x thing and you think x is something everyone does, but actually it was just those 3 people happened to all do that and you noticed. All Mandalorians Ben had ever been formally introduced to belonged to Houses, because they tended to be major players in politics on Mandalore, therefore he assumed that all Mandalorian clans belonged to a House. Since he learned by being there rather than some kind of course like the Integration program, that kind of thing is bound to happen. But for the moment, it just makes Clan Kenobi even more extremely suspicious and makes Akkus/Jango want to keep a closer eye on them. 
> 
> I was initially planning that next chapter we'd get to Keldabe and start moving along with that, but because I'm now getting into a whole side plot thing with Sioth having the force who knows. I keep adding scenes in front of the "going to Keldabe" bullet point in my notes so... 
> 
> Mando'a  
> Keldabe - the capital city of the main Mandalore planet, Mandayaim.  
> Mand'alor - _sole ruler_. Basically the king or emperor of Mandalore.  
> Sundari - a city on Mandayaim, where House Kryse is mainly based.  
> Vod - _sibling_ Can be a literal sibling or a person that's part of your in-group.  
> Ad'e - _children (plural)_.


	4. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was part of the next chapter but it wasn't really working for me so I'm pulling it out and making it an interlude. Enjoy a day with Waxer and Boil :).

Boil woke up as Ben began to move around after first light, feeling pretty well-rested considering his midnight watch but still grumpy. There was just something about mornings that disagreed with him. Pretty unfortunate considering his lot in life was to be a soldier, early mornings were generally a given.

He supposed the slow pace was letting him relax too much – he didn’t remember waking up early being this hard on the _Negotiator._ Or maybe it was just that half the time when he got woken up it was because they were being attacked and there was no time to be grumpy.

Stumbling a little as he got up, he grunted in thanks as he accepted a ration bar from Waxer for breakfast. Waxer was too cheerful as usual. He was continuing his usual morning routine peppering Ben with obscure questions about Mandalore, and most the answers had the caveat _well, in our reality..._ making the information probably next to useless.

Boil let him have his fun. He knew he was a pessimist and Waxer’s optimistic outlook tended to prevent him from spiraling too much into negative what-ifs. While Waxer had never been jaded, meeting and helping little Numa seemed to have reinforced the sense that good things could happen. Boil still wasn’t sure their luck was all that great.

Ben and Kote left shortly after finishing firstmeal, such as it was, and Boil and Waxer went down to the small stream they’d found to wash. Ben and Kote generally went when they came back from the village, by which time it was fairly dark but the water was a bit warmer.

After the first shock of cold though, it was pretty nice he had to admit. He and Waxer leisurely washed everyone’s clothes and hung them from a line they’d strung up between two tree branches. They chatted as they worked. They’d managed to pass the point with their Mando’a from speaking in a lot of fairly short, simple sentences into being able to chat more easily, although their word usage was still sometimes a bit simple. Boil hoped if they started working no one asked them to actually read much, because there was a reason it tended to be Ben or Kote reading the complicated articles on the datapad. They were all working on it, and their genetic modifications likely made them learn faster than a nat-born, but they weren’t that fast yet.

“Pretty good that we landed here really,” Waxer remarked as they worked, “I mean, the datapad says large areas of Manda’yaim is drier, uh, grassy places. It would have been a lot harder to hide if there weren’t many trees around.”

“Yes, it’s very lucky that we got stuck right here, in between being not very lucky in getting stuck in this reality at all,” Boil said.

“Ben would probably say it was the will of the force or something,” Waxer said.

“Will of the force that we got stuck here or will of the force that we got stuck somewhere not terrible?” Boil raised an eyebrow at Waxer.

“Uh... maybe both?”

Boil snorted and shook his head. “I’m not really sure about all that will of the force stuff. Seems too much like saying we should all just accept whatever comes to us and not try.” He looked up at the point of static, still hanging unnaturally in the sky, neither bigger nor smaller than when he’d last looked. “On the other hand, I don’t know much but I do know there’s nothing normal about falling into another reality.”

“I don’t think that’s what the will of the force is,” Waxer said, “I mean, Ben’s not the not-trying type, and he’s all about that.”

“I guess,” Boil said, “But you’d think something as big as a whole war would have to be a ‘will of the force’ thing, and what, does that mean all the Vod’e that have died were always supposed to? That Numa’s parents were supposed to?”

“Well, I don’t want to think it’s like _that,”_ said Waxer. “It’s probably just... helpful stuff, right? Maybe something about coming here is helpful.”

Boil looked at him skeptically.

“What? Maybe we, I don’t know, learn something important. And then we get back and it helps end the war somehow.”

Boil shook his head. “I think there’s you looking on the bright side and then there’s stupidity. Let’s run drills.”

Most of their days were pretty slow. There were some basic chores they did, washing things, collecting wood for the fire, making sure the camp was generally clean and organized. They had tried to set traps for some of the smaller animals at first, but the couple credits it saved on food wasn’t really worth the effort and other supplies they’d need to buy to properly prepare and cook them. Not when there were other, much more delicious options available anyway.

Boil had slowly gotten used to the heat of Mandalorian cooking, although it still made his nose run almost every meal. Now that his mouth had gotten the message that such intense flavors existed, he actually enjoyed eating here. It had always seemed like a thing you did because your body needed it back in their old reality, like stretching before training or going to the fresher. He hadn’t really understood the point when the generals had talked about things like diners and restaurants.

After lunch they settled in to try reading Mando’a a bit more, but it was slower going without Ben there to help them. Waxer sighed after scrolling slowly through the pad for an hour and passed it to him before laying back and closing his eyes. Boil’s mouth pulled into a fond smile. He’s sure he’d never seen any of the Vod’e enjoying what was effectively an afternoon nap – very different from being on a midday rest cycle – at least not in Ghost Company. Their reputation combined with General Kenobi’s meant they were one of the few companies many Senators knew by name, and they were always being requested to put out this or that minor fire in between the major campaigns ordered by the Jedi Council or the Chancellor’s Office.

As the shadows started to get longer, he poked Waxer awake and they prepped the camp again for Kote and Ben’s return. Although even that deadline was pretty vague, given that sometimes their afternoon jobs sometimes took more or less time. They’d take down the clothes from the line and put them away, then start the fire before dark.

Latemeal with all of them together was usually pretty relaxed, with Ben reading out anything interesting he found on the pad. Boil fell asleep after his watch looking up at the stars, wondering if this was what people meant when they talked about freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when I wrote this I was trying to in some way kind of convey that Waxer and Boil are still learning Mando'a, so I tried to keep the vocabulary kind of simple and avoid specialized terminology for the most part. I'll stop doing it within the next couple of chapters as I imagine their improvement would bring them to a point that it wouldn't be noticeable anymore.


	5. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the chapter where the Dark AU, more Integration-ish style "casual/social acceptance of stuff that is objectively awful" starts being discussed. I updated the tags for it. To be clear: slavery is bad, cultural indoctrination is bad, the Mandalorian Empire is genocidal (in the cultural sense) and bad. If some characters have ambivalent or positive feelings about some of these things because of their own upbringing, that's because their upbringing was messed up, not because these things are acceptable.
> 
> This chapter is also basically just people talking FOREVER because that's what needed to happen. Also mentions of sad and shitty things happening to clones during their upbringing - reconditioning, clones being killed, etc.

When they proposed the idea to go to Keldabe with Akkus at the end of the week, rather than waiting and paying their own way to Sundari, Boil and Waxer were clearly enthusiastic.

“We could get a cheap room,” Waxer said dreamily, “With a _fresher_.”

“We probably have enough credits for that, especially if we don’t have to spend so many of them on transport instead,” Kote agreed.

“What, vod, you’re tired of roughing it already?” Boil asked jokingly. “I thought you always said you wanted to go camping on leave.”

“Camping’s not bad,” Waxer admitted, “But it would be nice not to shit in a hole for a while.”

“Then we’re agreed,” Ben said with amusement.

“Oh, Ben, could you clear something up about the force us? We were arguing about it today,” Waxer said. “What’s the ‘will of the force’? Is it like fate?”

“Starting with an easy question, I see,” said Ben wryly. Kote watched him bring a hand up to his beard and stroke it in thought. “Keep in mind a lot of Jedi have their own views on Jedi philosophies, so not every Jedi will agree on exactly what the will of the force is. For myself, it’s more of an oath to trust that the force will see me into a better situation, even if it might seem grim in the moment. The better situation might not be for me personally, but I hope that it will be better for sentient beings as a whole.”

Waxer nodded with mock solemness. “Sounds closer to what I said than what Boil said.”

Boil rolled his eyes and huffed.

Ben looked at the three of them before continuing gently, “Going back to leaving, we should leave the armor buried here I think, but take anything else that might be useful. We don’t know how long it will take to get jobs.”

The three Vod’e clearly didn’t want to leave their armor behind, but eventually agreed. It would be hard to hide well enough.

“Maybe one day we could buy some actual beskar pieces,” Waxer said, “They’d be better than what we have and there’s no one around to tell us we can’t anymore.”

“We haven’t sworn the Resol’nare (6 tenants of being Mandalorian) though,” Kote pointed out, “Even if just by being here most people will assume we have. We’re not _actually_ Mandalorian.”

“And it could make things worse for us, if we ever got found out,” Boil said, “I mean, the Mandalorian trainers were _touchy_ about their beskar’gam (Mandalorian armor), and our reality didn’t even have a Mand’alor to swear to.”

Touchy was one word for it, Kote thought. Most of the Vod’e knew to never, _ever_ touch a trainer’s beskar’gam, but Kote was probably one of the few who had seen firsthand why as a very young cadet. One of the command class had been killed when, during a class on unarmored combat, he’d picked up one of the trainer’s removed vambraces just to see what it felt like. It was the first time the Vod’e had been called aruetiise (outsiders, foreigners) – to their faces, anyway.

Fett had casually agreed, when Fox – then just CC-1010 – had tentatively asked him about it when he seemed to be in a good mood – “You’re genetically modified clones made for the Republic, not Mandalorians. That would make you aruetiise, I suppose,” he’d said. Kote had gotten the feeling that Fett hadn’t previously thought of them as sentient enough to be even aruetiise, and it was shortly thereafter that a few of the command class had been given names, including Kote, before Fett seemed to lose interest in viewing them as more than products again.

Kote had been young enough to not really understand why Boba could be Mandalorian, or the Nulls could be considered Skirata’s ad’e, but they couldn’t. He still didn’t, to be honest, but accepted that it was something true. The Vod’e were aruetiise, and therefore didn’t have souls and therefore could never wear beskar’gam.

“The Resol’nare and beskar’gam are things best left in the future, I think,” Ben said. “We certainly don’t have the credits for it to even be an issue at the moment.”

Kote looked at Ben in surprise. “Are you planning to swear the Resol’nare?” he asked.

Ben took a deep breath. “I’m considering that we may have to, eventually. If getting back seems impossible and going to the Republic would also be inadvisable. There are things I don’t like about how this Empire is run, but it may be the best option. One of best things about Mandalorian culture is how accepting they used to be – and in this reality, are – of those wanting to become Mandalorian. If we can’t get back and need a home, this would be a place we could.”

Kote pursed his lips. “And swear loyalty to _Fett,”_ he said darkly. He wasn’t sure if he could do something that required that, even to a different version of Fett. He had respected Fett as a warrior and a trainer but hated how he had seemed to truly view the Vod’e as products not people.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind,” said Waxer. “How often would we even meet Fett? Probably never? He’s the leader of a whole Empire and we’re not planning to join the military, right?”

“Actively fighting against the Republic here seems like going a little too far, yeah,” said Boil.

“We might see a whole lot of him if he ever finds out we’re his clones,” Kote pointed out.

“As I said, a topic for the future, not now,” said Ben. “It was just something I’d been thinking about, not an immediate concern.”

“Let’s talk about going to Keldabe then,” Kote said, allowing the matter to rest for now. “Akkus seems well connected, but I’m not sure if we should rely on their generosity too much. Something still seems off.”

Ben sighed. “I don’t want to be overly suspicious. Clan Wral has helped us a great deal,” he said. “But I agree that the timing of Akkus’ arrival seems highly coincidental, especially since Isla didn’t mention their cousin would be coming to visit. I don’t have a _bad_ feeling...” he trailed off.

“But you don’t have a good one either,” Kote finished.

“Exactly.”

“Stop being so negative,” Waxer said, “Think of the fresher! This is going to be _great.”_

Boil groaned. “Well now something bad is _definitely_ going to happen.”

Ben chuckled and said, “I never took you for someone superstitious, Boil,”

“He just always thinks something bad is going to happen,” Waxer said, “And now he’s trying to blame it on me.”

“All right ad’ike (children - familiar), settle down,” Kote said with amusement. “That _is_ something we should probably talk about though. But it might be a long conversation so we could save it for tomorrow.”

Ben raised an eyebrow in question.

“Contingency plans,” Kote said. “For if we’re found out as outsiders, if we run into Fett in Keldabe, or even just if other people start realizing just how much we look like the Mand’alor. We need to have an explanation ready that we all know so our stories are straight. We’ve been lucky this far because Isla hasn’t really asked much, and then we were caught off guard by Akkus.”

“Ah,” Ben said. “Yes, that would be good to discuss. Well, think of some possible situations and solutions and we’ll talk about them tomorrow.”

“Thank the force,” said Waxer, laying down next to the fire with a thunk.

“Don’t get too comfy,” Boil said, “It’s your first watch.”

Waxer whined and sat back up, standing up to walk over to the rock the person on watch normally sat on.

The others got ready to sleep, and Kote’s thoughts swirled with both future possibilities and creeping grief. Could he really let go of ever getting back? The Vod’e lived with the knowledge that many of them would die, but also with the knowledge that it would be pretty difficult to kill _all_ of them. When he imagined losing Rex, as hard as that would be, he always thought about all the Vod’e he would have left.

It was a relief to not be completely alone here, but it was also just so many fewer people than he was used to.

Just three of them in the whole galaxy.

He forced his thoughts to calm and closed his eyes.

The next day, Kote finished washing up after latemeal and settled in with his cup of caf – powdered caf, but half the time that’s all he’d had in the other reality too. He always had caf for strategy briefings, to the point that shinies trying to get on his good side often brought him a new cup as soon as the old one was done.

He himself usually made General Kenobi some tea, but they hadn’t found any yet and he couldn’t exactly just _ask_ someone how to make shig. Well, he’d asked Ben but Ben didn’t actually know either. It apparently varied a lot in taste and quality, and he wasn’t exactly sure what was in the kind of shig he liked.

“Contingencies,” Kote began, “Most likely scenario is someone talks about how much we look like the Mand’alor.”

“Well, there must be some distant relatives of Fett on Concord Dawn – he’s still from there in this reality,” Ben said. “One of the articles I read mentioned it. If you keep it vague – just say you’re also from Concord Dawn, that would probably be enough for most people. Nothing concrete but appropriately boring that most people would lose interest.”

“That would work on random citizens,” Boil said, “But what about if the government starts asking? They might know what Obi-Wan Kenobi looks like too.”

“We could just tell them the truth,” Waxer said.

“Waxer!” Boil complained, “A _good_ idea. You’ve been bringing that up all day.”

Ben hummed in thought, and Kote glanced at him.

“What? It _is_ a good idea,” Waxer defended. “I told you, we can just tell them where the static thingy is. The data from our buckets says we went from being in the Lahara Sector and then we were suddenly falling from the middle of nowhere here. Our Republic isn’t at war with Mandalore, and maybe they could help us get back.”

“Even if they believed we didn’t fake the data, they would just do that out of the goodness of their hearts?” Boil asked.

“Both of you have good points,” Ben cut in, “And I think the Concord Dawn story would be best unless someone discovers something more incriminating.”

“Like trying to verify a connection with a DNA test,” Kote muttered. They had very incriminating DNA. Some markers that made them come up as very close relatives of Jango Fett, and others that would make it clear to most geneticists that they’d been genetically modified at the very least. Plenty that might make it clear they were clones.

“Exactly,” Ben said. “That would be something it would be hard to talk our way out of. In that case, honesty might be the best policy. We’ll give as much evidence as we can, and hope they believe it.”

“What’ll happen to us then?” Waxer asked.

“If they don’t believe it, worst case is we’ll be killed or enslaved,” Boil said gloomily. Kote knew Ben hadn’t liked what he’d been able to guess from news articles about new planets conquered by Mandalore. Systems generally seemed to have two choices – the ones that refused to become Mandalorian were enslaved, although it seemed fairly rare that it actually happened. Most planets agreed to become citizens, which made sense when the other option was slavery. Kote wasn’t sure how _becoming Mandalorian_ worked, exactly, and most news articles were unclear on the details. People just went though some kind of ‘integration program’ and then were granted full citizenship within the Empire. It was just another one of those things that everyone knew about, so it never needed laid out exactly what it was. Whatever method they had clearly worked, though, since there were holonews stories of previously Republican systems taking up arms against the Republic reconquering them less than a decade after being conquered by Mandalore.

Although, they probably didn’t publish the stories about the systems that _did_ rebel and go back to the Republic. That was just how propaganda worked.

“Let’s not think of absolute worst cases just yet,” Ben said. “We aren’t part of _this_ Republic, and we don’t have particular ill will towards Mandalore, even if I don’t personally condone certain practices.” He looked to the side, lips pursed, “I think the most likely options are we will be imprisoned, or they will choose to help us in exchange for something. If this war has been ongoing for thousands of years, information about Republic space, even if it’s a different reality, might be valuable.”

“Should we be assisting an enemy of the Republic, though?” asked Boil, “It’s still the Republic.”

“Regs say that if we’re cut off from the GAR but still in good shape, our primary responsibility is to get back. Of course we shouldn’t work against the Republic, but this isn’t _our_ Republic. Any information we give to the Mandalorians wouldn’t negatively affect the Republic in our reality,” Kote said. It was cold but it was true. He had no illusions that he was irreplicable, or even that Ben was, but having the high general _and_ the marshal commander of a whole systems army missing for even as long as they’d already been missing would take time to replace, time they didn’t often have. Not to mention Ben’s role as a council member of the Jedi Order. He hoped they had picked Rex to replace him as marshal commander, but on the other hand he hoped they _hadn’t_ picked Skywalker to replace Ben.

“That’s true,” Ben said, bringing Kote back to his current reality, not the old one. “We would avoid giving truly sensitive information, like the inner workings of the Jedi Order or the GAR as we know it, but locations of planets in Republic space with valuable resources, for example, or information about terrain might be useful. Then again,” he said wryly, “given how different Manda’yaim is from our own reality, perhaps it wouldn’t be all that accurate.”

“What if they can’t help us get back, and offer to let us stay?” Waxer asked. “There was that ‘integration’ thing mentioned in the newest article about Corsin, what is it?”

Ben hummed, “I’m not sure. Given that after people go through it they are considered full citizens, legally equal to current ones, it seems somewhat... intense. Especially when before going through it they’re often considered enemies.”

“Yeah,” said Boil, “It kind of sounds like intense retraining when a new battalion is formed. The 212th did that before we were deployed. Teach people the information and skills they need that might be different from their general training, build cohesion, that kind of thing. But how could they trust that the people wouldn’t just rebel once they’ve been made citizens and are considered trustworthy? The loyalties of the GAR are pretty much the same, even if the exact chain of command is different.”

“Maybe it’s more like reconditioning,” Kote said grimly. The Jedi had put a stop to reconditioning once they found out exactly what it _was,_ but he still knew vod’e who had been reconditioned. They didn’t last long on the front, and Kote did his best now that he was a marshal commander to give them non-combat roles when he could or assign someone to watch out for them. They could be stilted and a bit creepy, but they didn’t deserve to die, and some of them started to recover if they were given enough time.

“I don’t think so,” Ben said slowly. “Zadmiri, the elderly twi’lek we helped prepare their farm for winter a few days ago, they mentioned they had moved here after their home planet joined the Empire and they met their riduur (spouse). That would imply they’d been through this ‘integration.’”

“They definitely didn’t seem like they’d been reconditioned,” Kote agreed. The twi’lek had been extremely personable, in fact, and grateful for the company. Their riduur had died the previous Spring and while others in the community tried to pitch in, it was hard to take care of a farm by themselves. They’d been more than happen to share some food and some spare credits with Kote and Ben in exchange for help.

“Well, even retraining can sometimes really change your mindset,” Waxer reasoned, “ARC troopers identify much more strongly with their ARC squads than with their old trooper squads, or even batchmates after retraining.”

“Oh?” Ben asked.

“We’re still part of the GAR,” Waxer continued, “and it’s not like you stop caring about the other Vod’e, but being an ARC becomes really central to your identity. I’ve seen the same happen with bomb squad units, or other specialty units. There’s that nat-born in the bomb squad attached to the 212th, Canad? From the old Coruscant bomb squad before that was folded into the GAR. He did retraining with the rest of the 212th bomb squad and now he acts a lot like a Vod. He uses clone slang and he’s even adopted our accent a little.”

Ben looked at them in mild alarm, “Retraining changes people that much?”

“Not... not in a bad way?” Waxer said tentatively, “Not like reconditioning, anyway. They’re still themselves. I mean, specialty units are often sent to the front right away and they need to have good cohesion. Building that in a short time is maybe kind of a big mental shift. But it’s necessary, right? If Canad couldn’t act and think like a Vod, he wouldn’t be an effective part of the unit. I’m just saying, if retraining integrates even nat-borns into their squads, maybe the Mandalorians can do something like that with whole populations.”

“It would be pretty smart if they could, I guess,” said Boil, “Think how fast the war would be over if we could just reprogram all the Separatist droids in the factories we find. If you could just shift people’s loyalties, you wouldn’t have to keep prisoners.”

“But it would be cultural genocide!” Ben burst out, sounding as upset as Kote had ever heard him. “By the Empire’s own account most people on Corsin _don’t want_ to be Mandalorian, they’re just agreeing because the other option is slavery.”

Waxer looked a bit nervous in the face of Ben’s obvious disagreement but pressed on. One thing here, Kote thought, was that even if in the other reality they trusted that their _general_ would never have them decommissioned, here they weren’t worried about someone going above Ben’s head, and it made them bolder. “Well, I don’t really know about that, I guess. The Vod’e don’t get to pick our battalions or whether we become ARC troopers,” Waxer shrugged. “But if you’re seen well-suited for something, someone else picks it for you. It’s just practical.”

Ben swallowed and hung his head, seeming to lose his anger in an instant.

“Ben?” Kote said, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder.

“In our reality where we were so busy,” he said quietly, “It was all too easy to forget none of you have a choice.”

“But the Jedi don’t have a choice either though, right? It’s different but the Jedi can’t refuse the Senate’s orders, I heard.”

“But we have the choice to leave the Order, at least, even if it would be a very difficult decision,” Ben said.

“Well, on the integration front, don’t Jedi do something similar with kids who join? Most Jedi seem to identify as Jedi first, their species and homeworld second,” said Waxer.

Ben frowned, “You’re right, I suppose as part of learning how to use the force, we do also learn how to be culturally Jedi. But I suppose I can’t think of that as the same thing you’re describing, even if I can understand why you do. The Vod’e have had far fewer choices than even a conquered people seem to.”

Ben sighed and looked at the dark sky.

“With the war on, there was never any time to think. Never time to research alternatives or to push at the Senate. I know Mace, Plo, and I, at least, have been working on it in our spare time, little as it is. Sometimes I get the feeling someone wants us too busy to think. We felt becoming generals was the best way to both do our duty and protect the Vod’e from being under the command of worse people, people who might not treat you as sentients. But maybe we also lost the moment we agreed to command those whose choices are so limited.”

After a long moment, Kote spoke, “Let’s leave this for now. We have a vague plan, and that’s probably good enough for now. No-”

“-plan survives contact with the enemy, yes, we know,” said Waxer teasingly.

Kote lip pulled back into a half-smile. The other commanders could sometimes be irreverent with each other in their – incredibly limited – downtime, but he didn’t think any of Ghost Company had ever felt comfortable enough to interrupt him. It felt kind of nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Resol’nare - 6 tenants of being Mandalorian, I think most people know these from all the other fics (if this is your first fic with Mandalorian cultural stuff, please go read a better one first :x), but the most relevant part in this chapter is "rallying to the cause of the Mand'alor," which Kote has an issue with.  
> Mand'alor - _sole ruler_. Basically the king or emperor of Mandalore.  
> Vod/Vod'e - _sibling/siblings_ Can be a literal sibling or a person that's part of your in-group. When it's capitalized I'm usually using it to mean "clone."  
> Beskar'gam - _iron skin_ AKA Mandalorian armor.  
> Aruetii/Aruetiise - _outsider/s, foreigner/s_  
>  Ad’ike - _children_ \- more familiar than “ad’e,” I kind of imaging it like the difference between children and kids.
> 
> Anyway, as you can probably tell I'm setting things up for the clone characters to think a lot of what the Empire does sounds practical and reasonable and it kind of slowly making Ben think it sounds more reasonable as well (even though it's definitely not). Waxer's wrong to characterize the Jedi Order that way - but when you're surrounded by people who think something is reasonable or true, it's harder to see how unreasonable it is by yourself. There's a human phenomenon where if you see or hear something repeated over and over, your brain will start to accept it as true/correct. I'm not sure if I should add some more tags for this kind of thing? Unlike in Integration, at the moment they're kind of unwittingly brainwashing themselves so I'm not sure...
> 
> Re: non-clone soldiers in the GAR: I can believe that 99.9% of the rank and file GAR soldiers are clones, but there have got to be at least a few non-officer nat-borns who wanted to keep their jobs when the war started. Or anyway, in this story there are just because.


	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not totally happy with this chapter but I feel like I've edited and re-written sections too much and I just want to move on. I re-wrote one section one last time even while I was posting. Blergh.
> 
> There's also a section in here where I try to write in English about characters using two different words in Mando'a for something that only has one translation in "Basic". I wasn't sure if it was confusing how the speech gets broken up for Ben to comment which word they're using. But I guess I also wanted to make it clear that one of the words was a usage Ben didn't know, and so he was noting the linguistic difference. Anyway, hopefully it's not too difficult to parse. In future chapters I might just write it out as one or the other directly and stick a hover translate on it.

Ben was still troubled the next morning. The topic of the Vod’e and their lack of choices wasn’t a new one – there had been plenty of long discussions with Mace on the subject – but it was newly troubling to realize how their view of sentient rights was understandably skewed. He hadn’t gotten much sleep, actually, meditating on the difference between supporting someone to get along in a culture or role they were joining and the forceful integration hinted at in the articles about Corsin. It was clear that when the other choice was slavery, it must be forced in some way. Yes, he acknowledged that being a Jedi was as much a culture as a job, and those who grew up immersed in it rarely wanted to leave, even given how difficult the path of being a Jedi was.

He supposed it would be a bit too late if they waited until children were old enough to specifically _choose_ they wanted to be Jedi, so instead they were trained in the basics while they grew up - and that included the cultural basics. As a result, by the time they reached an age where they were able to choose, they already thought of themselves as Jedi, or at least future Jedi. While the Order tried to make it clear that anyone could leave at any time and there was no shame in it, not everyone understood that. He hadn't when he'd been very young. He sometimes worried the only reason Anakin was still in the Order, war aside, was because he felt choosing to stop being a Jedi was a sign of failure, or would mean cutting himself off from the family he’d found with them.

Children did culturally adapt to being Jedi, but wasn't the same as what Mandalorians seemed to be doing, whatever the others thought. There was a difference between doing your best to help children who could hurt themselves or others and weren’t old enough to make an informed decision and forcing an entire population to adhere to your culture under threat of slavery.

On the other hand, the Mandalorians were at war. As he knew very well, morality often took a backseat to practicality in war.

He sighed. His thoughts were just going around in circles. None of them knew enough about how this ‘integration’ worked to really compare it to their own experiences, he was just bothered by how ambivalent the others had seemed about the idea.

The end of the week rolled around, and Ben and Kote had gotten a handle on dodging Akkus’ questions – being fairly vague seemed to be working out for them so far. Akkus’ ad Sioth arrived mid-morning while Ben and Kote were helping Isla at their shop.

Ben startled briefly when he realized he could feel a strong presence – this Sioth was fairly force-sensitive. Probably enough to have been trained as a Jedi if they’d been in the Republic.

“Si’ka!” Akkus called.

The younger Theelin jogged over from the flyer, and Ben forced himself to turn back to his work for the moment. There would be time for introductions later.

At second meal, Ben met Sioth officially, but was certainly not planning to bring up the topic of the force. Unfortunately for him, Sioth brought it up first.

“So, Ben,” Sioth said, turning to him. “You can feel the force too, can’t you?” Ben noticed though his alarm Sioth used the word _manda_ for the force, rather than the more neutral _te traat_ he’d learned, but Sioth’s gesture at their head and the way their thoughts curled around the word made it clear what they were talking about.

Ben felt Kote tense slightly next to him, and Ben ducked his head to glanced sideways at Akkus and Isla warily.

Sioth grinned. “Hey, it’s fine – I know the force-” and here they used _te traat_ instead of _manda_ “-has a bad reputation in the Empire, what with the Jedi and the Sith using it. And even our force-” this time they used _manda_ – Ben decided it was a way to make a verbal distinction between the force Mandalorians used and the force others used “-distracts commandos and puts kids into comas-”

“What?” Ben asked incredulously.

Sioth raised an eyebrow, looking particularly like their buir. “Haven’t heard of that? You feel pretty strong, your clan is lucky it never happened to you,” they sobered, “I’m pretty lucky it’s never happened to me either.”

“Some fall into comas?” asked Ben.

“And die fairly often. It’s about a 50-50 chance they’ll wake up, for ad’ike. The chance of waking up is higher the older you get, so I’m hoping I’m pretty safe now.”

“And why do they... fall into a coma?” Ben asked, although he had his suspicions. There was a reason the Edu Corps was also tasked with giving basic force training to any force sensitives they found, even if they weren’t going to join a force sect.

“The ones who wake up say they had really vivid dreams.”

“Visions,” Ben remarked quietly. He thought for a moment. While they didn’t want to be found out, he felt a need to help Sioth, who was clearly afraid they would someday be trapped in a vision and never wake up. He could feel the same spark of fear from Akkus when Sioth talked about it too. “I... see things too, sometimes,” he finally said, “Sometimes what I see later happens, other times I change something, and it doesn’t. But I know how to not get... lost like that.”

“Really?” Sioth asked, “Where did you learn that?”

It was a fairly pointed question, and Ben suspected Sioth was as shrewd as their buir. “Well, here and there. I met a wanderer once who taught me some.” Surely, even in this reality there were at least a few Jedi – or trained force-users, anyway – who wandered the galaxy wherever the force pointed them.

Sioth leaned forward eagerly. “Do you think you could teach me some?”

“Ah, well,” Ben glanced over at Kote for help, but Kote just raised his eyebrows. No time to discuss it, and it hadn’t been one of the things they’d talked about previously, so it was his decision. “I just know a few things, I’m not sure I’m qualified to teach anyone.”

Sioth gave him an incredulous look. “I’ve never met anyone who would even modestly claim to know ‘a few things’ so I think that makes you more qualified than possibly anyone in the Empire.”

Apparently even his vague claim of minimal training was unusual. Ben still felt off balance – he hadn’t really wanted anyone, much less Akkus who still radiated suspicion sometimes, to know he was force-sensitive, as that seemed a step too close to knowing he was a Jedi.

“Please?” Sioth asked again. “Even if I haven’t had... visions, I’ve still had issues, issues that affect my ability to focus in a fight. I don’t know how to block everything out when it gets overwhelming, so if you could even just help me with that...”

“I would also be very grateful,” Akkus said, “Sioth is old enough now to be sent on missions in contested space, but this has been a problem. If you could help even a little, it would be more than adequate payment for the ride.”

They were both being sincere. Whatever else was going on with Akkus – the reason they came so suddenly, the reason they were pushing them to go to Keldabe – Ben could tell that in this, at least, they were just a buir concerned for their ad. Sioth, too, was legitimately afraid of their power, how uncontrollable and unknown it seemed.

Ben felt himself soften. He would have to be careful, to not let on how much he knew, but helping a young force-sensitive was perhaps worth the risk. He felt concern, too, for the ad’e falling into comas – were there really no trained force users in a position to help the Mandalorians? The Jedi, tied as they were to the Republic, wouldn’t be an option, but what about others? Was it that Mandalorian prejudice against the force was just too strong?

Regardless, there was someone here who needed his help, help that perhaps only he could provide. “All right,” he said finally.

“When?” asked Sioth.

“We have enough credits to take the afternoon off,” Kote said mildly, “I can keep watch while you stare at each other.”

“I was actually thinking we might try floating things,” Ben said primly.

“How exciting,” Kote said dryly.

Akkus watched as Sioth and Ben settled outside behind the shop. Ben had a pad stylus and was slowly coaching Sioth through floating it. Seeing Ben easily float the stylus between them made zir tense at first, but Ben seemed to legitimately only be trying to teach. It was another clue that didn’t fit – being a force user pointed toward Ben being, in fact, Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi on some kind of infiltration mission, but it went against everything they knew for an enemy to help a Mandalorian gain more control over the force. If Ben _was_ on an infiltration mission, they should have dithered and deflected Sioth the same as they’d been doing to Akkus since ze arrived.

Ze wandered over to where Kote was standing. They seemed to have very little interest in what Ben and Sioth were doing and instead were actually keeping watch. Akkus zirself could barely take zir eyes away from the floating stylus, so that pointed to casual use of it being common. On the other hand, ze didn’t think Kote could use it themselves. Sioth would have said something, but they also had the same kind of apathy toward the force ze had seen in commandos for skills they had no aptitude in – it was interesting when it was useful, but otherwise not.

It was the reaction of a soldier, not a merchant, Akkus thought. Not that merchants couldn’t be former soldiers, but Kote didn’t really look old enough for that. And while there were certainly plenty of Kote’s among the Mandalorian commandos on file, ze had one of zir staff check and none of them had Kote’s scar, or so closely resembled Jango.

“Did you ever meet this wanderer Ben talked about?” Akkus asked.

Kote looked away from scanning the horizon to look at zir. “No. I’ve never really asked about how Ben learned. It’s enough that they know what they’re doing.”

“Yes,” Akkus remarked, looking back at the pair, “Unusually well.”

Sioth had apparently managed to make the stylus float on his own, and Ben was now directing him through what seemed like perhaps a game of some kind – Ben would lift and drop the stylus while Sioth tried to catch it. It lent some weight to Ben’s story of learning from a wanderer when they were younger – it seemed like the type of game one might use to teach an ad.

As the day progressed, Sioth seemed to be doing well, from Akkus’ limited understanding. Ben was a good teacher, but also had a suspicious breadth of knowledge, even if he never referred directly to something that could be connected to what Akkus knew of the Jedi or the Sith.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Ben said after a few hours, “It’s kind of like a muscle – there’s only so much benefit to continuing to practice after a certain point. If you try some of the exercises tomorrow, they should come easier.”

Sioth beamed at Ben and thanked them, looking a bit tired but also relaxed and relieved. Akkus had never raised him to fear his ability, the way ze knew many other Mandalorians did, but Akkus knew that didn’t mean his lack of knowledge didn’t frighten him. Like any other tool, it could be dangerous if you didn’t know how it worked.

Akkus knew there were very few, other than Sioth, who would even have brought up Ben’s abilities. And while that was likely partially because he knew that they were being investigated, it was also because he wanted to find others to connect with, to learn from.

The unofficial social taboo against talking about force sensitivity was natural, given how little it was understood, but worked against the good of Mandalore. If Ben truly was a Mandalorian who had just learned how to control the force from someone, and not a secret Jedi, who knew how many more Mandalorians there were like them? Who knew how much more knowledge they could have about the force if people weren’t so ashamed or afraid of speaking up?

Akkus had talked with Jango frequently about the social perception of the force since Sioth had shown an aptitude, and part of their efforts had been a linguistic change – beginning to use _manda_ for the force used by Mandalorians. Since Jango and Akkus had begun carefully using it to separate the two while the Mand’alor was still Jaster Mereel, it had caught on fairly well. While it had made it easier for particularly parents to bring up problems their children were having related to it, the change hadn’t been as drastic as they’d hoped. Even if the force used by Mandalorians wasn’t something _bad_ necessarily, it was still unknown and a little frightening. It was still seen as more of a detriment than an asset.

Consequently, capturing force users alive had also become a priority for the Empire. Akkus hoped they might get someone who could teach them more about it, or even start a Mandalorian force tradition. But those with significant training – like Jedi or Sith – often died during the integration process, either because they refused to cooperate or because they just suddenly died for unknown reasons. Those that weren’t trained as much sometimes made it through the program, but they often didn’t know enough about their abilities to help much.

If Ben was willing to share what they knew, at least for now, Akkus would make sure anything useful was recorded and spread around. Ze was already quite sure, after watching Ben teach for just an afternoon, that regardless of Ben’s real intentions they could be an important asset for Mandalore. They shouldn’t be working as a merchant or doing day labor in the countryside, they should be in the capital teaching people.

Time would tell whether Ben could just be hired for that purpose, or if they would need to go through an integration program first. Akkus could only hope Ben’s willingness to help meant it would go better than all the others who could use the force they’d tried to integrate.

Akkus glanced again at Kote. Time would also tell whether these three Jango lookalikes were a part of some Republic or Sith plot. Ze rather hoped it would be possible to keep Kote around too, ze liked their smooth competency and no-nonsense attitude.

Before Kote and Ben headed back toward the forest that evening, Sioth asked if Ben might be willing to give them a few more tips the next day during the trip to Keldabe.

“And,” they asked, eyes wide and eager, “Maybe once you’ve settled in we could have lessons once a tenday? You’re really good at this, Ba’ji (teacher).”

Kote watched as Ben blushed slightly at being given the title of ‘teacher,’ although it should be expected given that he was a Jedi Master, even if Kote was a little unclear about the differences between the Jedi’s non-military ranks. He hadn’t thought Ben would ever be a bad teacher, but he was remarkably patient with someone who was clearly a complete beginner. He’d merely laughed when Sioth had almost stabbed him by losing control and moving the stylus too fast.

When they entered the forest, Ben sighed.

“Well, I’m glad it helped even if I couldn’t teach them much,” Ben said.

Kote raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you talking about? You seemed to be teaching them a lot. Sioth and Akkus both seemed pleased anyway.”

“Well, it’s a bit hard to teach about the force and not talk about the more... religious or philosophical aspects of Jedi beliefs,” Ben said, “I couldn’t even really teach them what they wanted to learn – how to shield effectively – because I wasn’t sure how to explain it in a way that wouldn’t sound too Jedi. Sioth has clearly been applying at least some of what they’ve learned in standard Mandalorian training to the force and had remarkable awareness and control. I probably could have taught them much more.”

“Well,” Kote said, “Maybe you could try explaining it to us tonight. Even though we’ve been working with you Jedi for years now, we still don’t really understand your beliefs that well. As you can tell,” he notes wryly, “From Waxer’s endless questions.”

Ben chuckled. “Well, it couldn’t hurt. Sioth is fairly safe from getting lost in a vision, I think. I don’t think they’re very strong in the Unifying Force, and that’s why they haven’t had problems so far. But I’m not sure how to explain _that_ in a way that reassures them without it sounding too Jedi, either.”

“See you’ve already lost me with ‘Unifying Force’ – I thought there was just the force the Jedi use and then the force the Sith use.”

“Technically, the force is the force,” said Ben, “The Jedi just choose to only use it in certain ways, as other ways can be dangerous. But some force users can also be more attuned to future possibilities than others. Visions are the most obvious form of it, but they can be somewhat dangerous to those who aren’t trained – they don’t always know how to get out of the vision. But it can also be just an openness to future possibilities, a sense of where you should be going.”

“So, visions are like... holovids, but sometimes you can’t turn them off,” Kote said, “And the rest is like having kind of vague intel.”

“Hm, well 'intel' sounds perhaps a bit more like the Living Force - that's the other type. But not a bad way to put it,” Ben said.

“And they’re _not_ very good at this - future one, right?” said Kote.

“Compared to some others, yes,” said Ben.

“Probably for the best,” said Kote.

They arrived at their camp to find it mostly packed up, ready for the next morning. Over dinner, Ben tried to explain how meditation and shielding worked, with the others helping him pare down his explanation. They were still a bit unsure about how the next day would go, but Boil and Waxer were both eager to get out of the woods.

“So,” said Jango, “Ben can use the force. And you’re still not convinced this isn’t just the Jedi Kenobi from the Republic?”

“I still can’t be sure,” Akkus said, “Our reports say the Jedi Kenobi was evacuating a moon near Vaal just a tenday ago. That would well overlap with when this Kenobi was in town, according to Isla. We don’t have visual confirmation he was there, but I had the information crosschecked with as many reports as I could, it seems legitimate.”

“And we’re fairly sure Jedi can’t be in two places at once,” Jango said.

Akkus grinned wryly. “Fairly. Ben also seems surprisingly open with their knowledge of the force if they really are one. Former Jedi we’ve tried to integrate have always refused to tell us anything useful, even if we say it’s for our ad’e.”

“But Ben is less cagey about this than most other topics, you said.”

“Yes.”

Jango hummed in thought. “Have Sioth keep them talking then. He might be able to gather more information that way.”

“He would be trying to do that anyway, to be honest,” Akkus said. Zir ad was _very_ eager to keep learning from Ben. “But I’ll let him know, ‘Alor.” Akkus bowed before ending the transmission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vod/Vod'e - _sibling/siblings_ Can be a literal sibling or a person that's part of your in-group. When it's capitalized I'm usually using it to mean "clone."  
> Ad/Ad'e/Ad'ike - _child/children_.  
> Manda - _the force used by Mandalorians_.  
> Te Traat - _the force (in general)_. I didn't invent this, I saw it... somewhere I can't find now. But it's a very literal translation of "force" as it's related to the Mando'a verb "to force". In my experience, when languages are talking about new concepts from other cultures, they either tend to just say whatever word was used by the language that thing originally came from (but with their own language's pronunciation and nuance), or they directly translate it into their own language.  
> Buir - _parent/guardian_.  
> Ba’ji - _teacher_. The actual Integration fic uses a different word, adat'juri, for teacher, but I liked this one from [Jetti'Manda](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27664916) (and probably others) just because... idk, it's shorter.  
> 'Alor - _short for Mand'alor_.
> 
> So yeah in this fic the reason there aren't any force users (even non-Jedi/non-Sith-related ones) helping Mandalore out with their force-sensitive children is because Mandalore would never consider just letting non-Mandalorians come in, teach force stuff, and then leave. They're always like "get force user > integration > ??? > profit" but it has thus far not worked out as a strategy for them.
> 
> Also in this chapter we have the point where the universe veered off from the original Integration fic - they mention the incident where Obi-Wan Kenobi was captured at the beginning of that fic. I'm going with Jango didn't end up going on that mission and it was slightly delayed in general due to Akkus investigating about Kote and Ben, so then that Obi-Wan Kenobi was not captured. 
> 
> Hoping to finish the draft of this fic by the end of March, although then I'll need to edit. But wish me luck! This chapter and the next 2 are being kind of road blocks, but I've been plugging away. Off to Keldabe next chapter, yaaay.


	7. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're going to Keldabe woooooo. Also this is now officially the longest single story I've ever written and we're not even finished yet. How did this happen.

The next morning, Waxer took one last look at the point of static before following the others into the trees. It felt odd to be leaving, but he was ready to start actually doing something again. It was funny, in the war he always desperately looked forward to the little bits of downtime they got, but now that he’d been effectively off for a couple of months, all he wanted was a job – well, to do something other than just taking care of the camp anyway.

He went over the story they’d decided on as he walked. He and Boil were twins – they weren’t batchmates but they were decanted pretty close to each other, so that would fit with how close they looked in age. Kote was older, which was true, even if he wasn’t as much older as he looked by nat-born standards. If anyone asked about how similar they looked, their father’s genes were just pretty strong – which was also kind of true. They were from Concord Dawn but didn’t know of any particular relation to Jango Fett. Ben hadn’t been able to tell them much about Concord Dawn, aside from that in the other reality it had been primarily agricultural. None of them really knew that much about farming, so they’d agreed to be pretty vague about that too.

Waxer wasn’t really sure why they couldn’t just find some government official in Keldabe and see if they couldn’t get some more official help – surely making themselves known voluntarily would only work in their favor? – but both Ben and Kote still felt like they didn’t have enough information and wanted to wait. Boil wasn’t in favor because he thought they would be just be executed as spies. He seemed to not realize that it was pretty optimistic to think they could find a way back before they were found out because Waxer was pretty sure they _would_ be found out eventually.

Well, anyway, he was outvoted. The fact that he had a _vote_ rather than Kote or Ben’s word just being final was a new experience, and it was enough that they were willing to hear him out and think about his arguments.

It was an odd, mid-morning time when they entered the village, so most people were out working, which was what they’d wanted. They saw barely anyone else until they stopped at what must be Isla’s shop. Ben introduced them to Sioth, who was prepping the flyer for departure, and Isla, who was standing outside waiting for them. Isla’s eyebrows rose when they caught sight of Boil, Kote, and Waxer, looking bemusedly between the three of them.

Waxer just grinned at them, hoping Isla’s apparent tendency to not ask many personal questions would continue for at least another few minutes.

“Buir is just getting a couple of things for some of our other clan members in Keldabe,” Sioth said. “They didn’t think to message us until this morning.”

Isla finally seemed to just decide not to ask and quirked a grin before calling behind them, “Riz! Clan Kenobi is leaving soon, come see them off!”

An ad’ika, who must be Isla’s ad Riz, ran out from the shop, and they were just as cute as Ben had said. Riz seemed to notice Boil and Waxer standing there too and froze, gazing back and forth at them with wide eyes. Was this the reaction they were going to get everywhere? It’d be hard to go out together even in the city if it was.

Riz finally frowned, looking at Waxer. “Why do you have a fuzzy thing on your lip? It looks funny.”

Well, it was better than inquisitive questions, and Waxer decided to lean into it. He put a hand over his heart and started to teeter like he would fall over. “I’ve been hit! Someone has insulted my facial hair! Boil, save me!” he cried dramatically.

Boil just smirked at him. Standing closer to the flyer, Kote somehow managed to look both indulgent and like he was struggling not to roll his eyes, while Ben’s mouth quirked into the tiniest smile as he talked quietly with Sioth.

Waxer fell to the ground in front of a giggling Riz and called, “Medic! Help!” He reached toward Riz. “You have to take it back! Say it doesn’t look funny!”

Riz was giggling as they said, _“It’s_ not funny, _you’re_ funny!”

Waxer laid back for a moment. “I’ll take it,” he said, and he jumped to his feet.

“If we’ve all fully recovered from our near-death experiences,” Ben said dryly, “I think we’re ready to go.”

Akkus had stepped out of the shop at some point, so Waxer guessed they were.

Waxer put himself next to the shop-side window once they got on and waved to Riz as they left.

Sioth turned around from where they were sitting next to Ben, assumably to pick his brain about force things on the journey. “I’m surprised you don’t have an ad or two, Waxer, you seem good with them.”

Waxer forced himself to beam at the compliment rather than look nervous at being asked something. He’d have to get used to it if they were going to get jobs, probably. “Well, haven’t had a lot of chances yet. Maybe someday.” There. That was vague but friendly, right? Now he just had to do that maybe all the time. Boil could probably get away with just pretending to be the stoic, silent type – he absolutely was not, but he could pretend – but Waxer knew himself well enough that he wouldn’t be able to keep that up for long in a casual setting.

The trip to Keldabe took a few hours, and Waxer was mentally noting all the things he wanted to ask Ben about as they went, reminding himself every time he went to ask that they weren’t alone and being overly inquisitive would probably be suspicious.

He sighed internally. He’d been better at keeping his mouth shut in the other reality. Well, he guessed he’d had to be, especially back on Kamino. Leaving Kamino and being in the 212th with Kote and Ben had allowed him a certain measure of freedom, but it was different than being here, far away from even the possibility of decommissioning. A few months of the freedom to talk whenever he wanted, and now it was difficult to keep everything in. He didn’t know what he was going to do if they really _did_ go back to the other reality.

Leaving the static portal seemed like an admission that they probably weren’t going to go back, and Waxer would rather they just acknowledged it, mourned the millions of Vod’e and others they would never see again, and built a life here. Maybe their lives would still be artificially shorter – well, except Ben’s – but it was very possible they’d have at least another fifteen or twenty years, something that couldn’t be said in the other reality. He didn’t know the exact statistics but making it to eleven was already pretty lucky for a regular trooper.

Back in the other reality, he’d certainly had plenty of idle ‘after the war, I’ll...’ types of plans, but regardless of what Boil thought he’d never taken them too seriously – it was just something to do to pass the time. But here, especially since they came out of the forest, the possibilities beat in his bones every second he was awake. Even if it was somehow possible to go back, he didn’t really want to give that up. Was that treason? He wasn’t sure.

He shifted his gaze from the window to look around the flyer. Ben was quietly talking with Sioth, probably about force stuff. Kote was looking out the front, and Waxer could see a city off in the far distance. Could they see Keldabe already?

The city rose up over the curve of the horizon, and Waxer’s face glued itself to the window again.

Keldabe was a riot of metal and color, figures in full painted beskar’gam were everywhere. Waxer’s heart felt full to bursting just looking at them. He looked at the others again. He hoped again, to the force or the universe or whatever else, that they could stay.

Kote glanced at Waxer as they got out of the flyer at the job office, their last stop for the day before heading to the apartment they’d contracted. Waxer’s finger was subtly drumming a rapid tap against his thigh and he was sporting a small grin as he looked around. At least someone was excited.

Akkus was being... extremely helpful. Granted, Ben was now helping Sioth with the force – something they’d been apparently struggling with their whole life. It was reasonable that Akkus would be grateful and want to help them in return, Kote just still felt _something_ was off.

The reactions of everyone around them were... odd. Kote had thought, at first, that people were noting their similarities to Fett and to each other and it made him tense, until he realized that it was mostly _Akkus_ they were noticing. Akkus had quite a presence, but at the housing office the staff had been somewhat overly deferential even considering that.

Still, it seemed to be working in their favor. They’d picked the first decent apartment they could afford, and while none of them really knew how long these types of things were supposed to take – GAR soldiers didn’t own apartments, and Jedi didn’t either – it seemed remarkably quick. All the options had been rather closer to the main government buildings in Keldabe than Kote preferred, though, which was also somewhat suspicious.

They hadn’t thought, he realized, to search for Akkus Wral’s name when they were trying to do research before they came to Keldabe. They'd searched for _Isla_ Wral, before Akkus had come, but that hadn't turned up any results. Since directories for regular citizens were usually only at special terminals, they had stopped really searching for specific people except for Fett.

But he was getting the feeling that Akkus might not be just a regular citizen.

He kept his thoughts in until the four of them were alone in their new apartment, having registered to be on the comm list for day labor jobs. The apartment was pretty basic, but it had a small kitchen and more individual space than the barracks on the _Negotiator._ Kote was used to his own quarters, but Waxer and Boil might appreciate the privacy.

Akkus and Sioth had both left them with their comm codes, and Sioth had wheedled Ben until they’d extracted a promise to meet for more force training the next Primeday. Kote was getting tenser as the goodbyes dragged out, and Ben could probably feel it because he managed to usher them out with the same finesse that made him famous as a diplomat in the other reality.

As soon as the door closed Kote forced himself to check for any monitoring devices first – surprisingly, given his suspicions, there were none. Then he got the datapad out of Ben’s pack, and keyed in ‘Akkus Wral.’ He sat down heavily.

“What is it?” Boil asked.

“Akkus Wral is an advisor in the Empire’s government,” he said, “They’re close with Fett.”

Ben also sat down heavily, while Boil groaned, putting a hand over his face.

“So, that means we’re found out, right?” said Waxer.

Ben hummed in thought. “If they thought for certain I was Obi-Wan Kenobi, I believe we would have been arrested by now.”

“They must be investigating,” Kote said, thinking back. “We didn’t really expect anyone important to take notice of us until we arrived at a bigger city, so we didn’t worry about all the holes in the stories we gave – no one here was supposed to know that we just suddenly walked out of the forest one day with barely any supplies. But I’m guessing Akkus interviewed Isla, so we must seem like unlikely infiltrators.”

“Well, we only have so long before they decide to bring us in,” said Boil.

Kote let out a frustrated breath. “Yes, we might have to do our convincing sooner than we expected.”

“Someone – Akkus, or someone else we don’t know yet – will likely be keeping an eye on us,” Ben remarked, “It might be best if those watching at least start to consider the truth as a possibility _before_ someone starts asking us questions. If it’s something they’ve already arrived at as a possibility themselves, it would make it more believable.”

“Do you really think ‘came from an alternate reality’ is going to occur to anyone?” Boil asked skeptically.

Ben raised an eyebrow. “It will if I start searching the public archives for things like ‘dimension travel.’ It might turn up something legitimately useful, and it will plant the idea in the minds of the people checking my searches.”

“Don’t go by yourself,” Kote said, “If they decided to pick you up, we might never know.”

“Oh, I’ll go,” said Waxer, “There was some stuff I wanted to look up in the archives too.”

Boil looked at him. “You know they’re going to be looking at all your searches, right?”

“Oh, yeah, that should be fine,” said Waxer, “I’m just going to look up some of the plants and stuff that were in the forest and on the ride here. Plus, it’ll be good Mando’a reading practice.”

Kote looked at Boil. “I guess the two of us are sticking together tomorrow then.”

“Well, you’ve got more sense than this one at least,” said Boil, gesturing at Waxer.

Kote laughed at Waxer’s offended face and got up to start putting their supplies away. Isla had kindly given them one last meal to take with them, so for now they were eating well. They’d have to start cooking for themselves from tomorrow though.

As night fell, Keldabe lit up like any other big city. Maybe sometime the four of them could go out, Kote thought. Not anytime soon, obviously, since getting drunk seemed like a bad idea when the government was investigating them, but someday.

He tried not to think about how much other Vod’e would have liked to see this Keldabe too.

Satine Kryze had been initially concerned when Akkus Wral took a ‘vacation’ to the countryside – she made note of any major changes in behavior among government officials that weren’t part of their conspiracy. If they were going to succeed in overthrowing Fett’s government, surprise was vital. They already knew a few – but not all – of their meetings had garnered notice, so they had now split themselves into separate groups assigned under the highest-ranking officials. Their meeting schedule had already been random on purpose, but now they were being even more cautious.

She’d been understandably suspicious that Wral’s sudden trip might have something to do with them. Ze hadn’t visited zir hometown as long as Satine had known zim and had only rarely taken days off for zir son. She’d quietly sliced into zir reports when she heard Wral was returning, hoping to learn where zir had really gone. Turned out Wral really _had_ gone to visit zir clan, but it wasn’t a social visit. She had been shocked to see a picture of Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi attached to one of the reports. She had met him in person only once, when she was a young staffer for the diplomatic arm of the Empire, but it was definitely him. Mandalore didn’t frequently have cause to use diplomacy rather than violence with the Republic – a foolish oversight, in her opinion, given how civilized they were compared to the Sith – but she had met him before those negotiations had broken down. He likely wouldn’t remember her – it was when she was too young to have the confidence not to wear beskar’gam like most of her peers did.

Once she was more assured that it wouldn’t harm her career, she chose to wear soft silks and delicate jewelry, displaying no open weapons – although she had a small pistol concealed in the folds of her skirt.

She remembered Kenobi as charming, the very image of the old Jedi peacekeepers from before the galaxy was plunged into endless wars. That had been before he’d been made a general, however, and she hoped he hadn’t changed too much.

Wral still wasn’t sure it was him and had put in zir report that ze would be investigating further, but Satine was convinced. She dismissed the others for now – Wral and Fett were of course very interested in them, but she didn’t care to wonder. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, Kenobi and his team were doing there, but they were clearly in over their heads. It was a brilliant opportunity to make contact with the Republic in a way they would trust – if she could subtly arrange for their escape without implicating herself, their conspiracy might be able to gain real momentum with Republic backing. The endorsement of a Jedi general would help legitimize them in the Republic’s eyes and make the aftermath of their takeover more stable.

Luckily, Wral would be keeping a close eye on them and tracking their movements. Satine would be able to check where they typically went, and hopefully also find a time when they were less watched – or watched by someone who wouldn’t recognize her providing she disguised herself somewhat. Perhaps she could repaint her besker’gam – she hadn’t worn it in several years anyway, so it was unlikely to be recognized if it had new colors.

She busied herself writing a proposal to her fellow conspirators to present at their next meeting. This could be the break they’d been waiting for, and she wouldn’t waste it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vod/Vod'e - _sibling/siblings_ Can be a literal sibling or a person that's part of your in-group. When it's capitalized I'm usually using it to mean "clone."  
> Ad/Ad'e/Ad'ike - _child/children_.  
> Buir - _parent/guardian_.
> 
> I'll be honest, I'm the sort of person who likes... pretty much every character, so I actually kind of like canon!Satine well enough. But Integration!Satine isn't that great. I'm kind of basing my view of Integration Satine vs Canon Satine on this other Integration AU [Su Cuy'gar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25272655), which is kind of the opposite of this fic (Integration!Jango goes to canon reality). But it'll be my own take on that difference.
> 
> On ages: I'm trying to keep the timeline in the clone wars super vague... obviously, it's before Umbara somewhere because Waxer isn't dead, but aside from that it's kind of ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. So Waxer and Boil are 11 AKA 22/23 and Kote is 12 AKA 24. Damn these kids are young 😬.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading.


End file.
